They call them glass sponges due to their thin and delicate structure, but in reality they are incredibly resistant, so much so that they have become the reference for building futuristic skyscrapers with a light but very solid appearance, as well as more robust planes and ships. This is the path opened by the research that won the Aspen Institute Italia 2024 prize, awarded to scientific works based on collaboration between Italy and the United States. Established in December 2015, the Aspen prize is awarded today in Rome.
THE SECRET IN THE SPONGES
The protagonist of the study is the sponge Euplectella Aspergillum, known as the Venus Basket, which lives deep in the Pacific Ocean and around Antarctica.
What interests researchers are its exceptional structural properties, which are due to the silicon fiber skeleton, an element that these sponges extract from sea water, transforming it into very thin glass fibres.
The structure, apparently fragile, is made very resistant thanks to the way in which the material is distributed in it. Numerous developments in very different sectors are based on the characteristics of the structure of glass sponges: from the creation of new and more efficient chemical reactors to air treatment systems and thinner and more resistant constructions than current ones.
THE AUTHORS OF THE RESEARCH
Published in the journal Nature and carried out using the Marconi 100 supercomputer at Cineca in Bologna, the research inspired by the structure of glass sponges was born from the dialogue between physics, biology, supercomputing and engineering.
All seven protagonists of this work were awarded, the first author of which is Giacomo Falcucci, from the Engineering department of the “Mario Lucertini” company of the Tor Vergata University and who when the study was carried out was working in the Physics department of the Harvard University.
Maurizio Porfiri of New York University contributed to understanding the biological implications of the results of the simulations done with the supercomputer.
Also collaborating were Sauro Succi of the Italian Institute of Technology and the National Research Council, Giorgio Amati of Cineca, Pierluigi Fanelli of the University of Tuscia, Vesselin K. Krastev of the University of Tor Vergata and Giovanni Polverino of the University of Western Australia in Perth.
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