With a material that's both as light as a parachute and strong as a bullet-proof vest, nature really figured something out with its arachnids. And, gradually, human scientists are figuring it out too.

Mechanical engineering researchers at MIT have devised a new method of studying the still somewhat mysterious properties of spider silk via computational modeling and mechanical analysis, with the result being a technique for 3D printing the material—weaving synthetic spider webs, in other words. Their work is described in a paper published Friday in Nature Communications.

Spider silk isn't just durable, it's awesomely multi-purpose. The stuff is useful for tasks including but not limited to catching prey, sensing vibration, protecting offspring, route-finding, and even flying (a talent known as "ballooning"). This range comes courtesy of not just the particular properties of individual silk strands, but of how they're put together into webs. Unfortunately, collecting natural web samples suitable for experimental testing is all but impossible, according to the MIT engineers.