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BBC News reports the impending use of carbon nanotubes to create ultra-strong body armor. Far stronger than any known filament, carbon nanotubes are manufactured by scientists who roll a single-atom-thick stretch of carbon, in the form of graphite, into tiny tubes.

According to the report, carbon nanotubes are ideal for body armor because material made up of them would be good at absorbing energy from fragments striking them at high speed—fragments, perhaps, in the form of bullets and shrapnel.

The report also states that material made from carbon nanotubes “could also find applications in the area of hi-tech ‘smart’ clothing, bomb-proof refuse bins, flexible solar panels, and, eventually, as a replacement for copper wire in transmitting electrical power and signals.”