Science is one of those crazy things where sometimes the best discoveries are made entirely by accident. That is what happened when Marco Lo Presti, a biotech researcher at Tufts University, was researching how mussels stick to rocky surfaces.

One of the undoubtedly boring parts of the research was cleaning the silk and dopamine mixture off of glass since that is part of what the mussels use. He used acetone to clean the glass, and in the process he noticed that the materials were changing. He explained to Wired:

“While using acetone to clean the glassware of this silk and dopamine substance. I noticed it was undergoing a transition into a solid format, into a web-looking material, into something that looked like a fiber.”

Upon further inspection, the newly created fibers made people think of the web shooters from the comic book superhero Spiderman. They quickly began looking into what uses this could have, including as a remote adhesive.

They published a paper in the journal Advanced Functional Materials that explained how the material was made, what it can be used for, and more.

Tufts engineering professor Fiorenzo Omenetto talked about his initial reaction to seeing what they discovered and its comparison to Spiderman.

“You explore and you play and you sort of connect the dots. Part of the play that is very underestimated is where you say ‘Hey, wait a second, is this like a Spider-Man thing?’ And you brush it off at first, but a material that mimics superpowers is always a very, very good thing.”

The liquid can be dropped down onto objects where it quickly solidifies so that it can then be lifted and moved. This will undoubtedly have many practical uses.

Lo Presti talked about the potential strength of this web, saying:

“We can now catch an object up to 30 or 35 centimeters away, and lift an object of around 15 to 20 grams.”

This is still fairly small scale testing, but given the impressive strength of silk and other similar fibers, there is a lot of potential for this type of thing.

You can see a video of the material in action here:

It is unlikely that this will be used to let people swing from skyscrapers anytime soon, but this is a great example of how important discoveries can come from the most unlikely places. Who knows what this web-shooter material will be used for in the future.