In ten years we will all be able to don suits giving us Spiderman like abilities, according to The Times. Unfortunately the new research from Nicola Pugno which The Times and others are reporting only shows theoretically that it could be done and rounds up previous research. We still don’t actually have even a prototype suit so ten years seems pretty ambitious to me.

Pugno, from the Polytechnic of Turin in Italy, has published an article in the Journal of Physics suggesting carbon nanotubes could be used to develop microscopic Velcro that could lead to human sticky suits. “However now that we are this step closer, it may not be long before we are seeing people climbing up the Empire State Building with nothing but sticky shoes and gloves to support them,” he says in the press release (a comment picked up with enthusiasm by UK tabloids The Sun and the Mirror). As the BBC notes, “Professor Pugno also outlined three properties which a real Spider-man suit must demonstrate. Firstly, and most obviously, it must be able to demonstrate strong adhesive properties. Secondly, the suit must be able to detach easily from a surface after it has stuck. Thirdly, the suit must, to some degree, be able to clean itself.”

Commenting on the story to Wired Ronald Fearing, an electrical engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said: “We already know that if you take the performance of the gecko and scale it up to a person, you’d be all set," he said. "We don’t know all the details of how the gecko works, however.” Scientists have been working on similar projects for years of course, but Pugno has pulled the various strands together in one article.

Of course, once you’ve gained super hero powers, you still have to put up with the same social problems – as Philip Ball explains in a recent Nature Muse.