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According to a report in New Scientist, Nicola Pugno of the Polytechnic of Turin in Italy has calculated how many nanotubes would be needed to support a person, taking into account small defects that develop in the tubes during manufacture.

When held 5 micrometres apart, to keep them invisible, they would form a cable only 1 centimetre in diameter weighing a mere 10 milligrams per kilometre.

A plate with more closely spaced holes could slide along the cable, bringing the nanotubes closer, and so into view.

Further development of the idea might completely change acrobatic acts performed in the circus, as well as special effects used in movies.

Carbon nanotubes are molecular-scale tubes of graphitic carbon with outstanding properties. They are among the stiffest and strongest fibres known, and have remarkable electronic properties and many other unique characteristics. For these reasons they have attracted huge academic and industrial interest, with thousands of papers on nanotubes being published every year. Commercial applications have been rather slow to develop, however, primarily because of the high production costs of the best quality nanotubes.

The current huge interest in carbon nanotubes is a direct consequence of the synthesis of buckminsterfullerene, C₆₀ , and other fullerenes, in 1985. The discovery that carbon could form stable, ordered structures other than graphite and diamond stimulated researchers worldwide to search for other new forms of carbon. The search was given new impetus when it was shown in 1990 that C₆₀ could be produced in a simple arc-evaporation apparatus readily available in all laboratories. It was using such an evaporator that the Japanese scientist Sumio Iijima discovered fullerene-related carbon nanotubes in 1991. The tubes contained at least two layers, often many more, and ranged in outer diameter from about 3 nm to 30 nm. They were invariably closed at both ends.