Doctor Shares How Magnetic Slime Robot Could Help Save Your Life

Scientists have successfully created an oozing magnetic slime that can help save lives. 

Apparently, our limited knowledge about slimes has been restricted to two things only, and that is creepy sticky alines and Robin Williams' smart, hapless professor creating Flubber.

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Well, science has somehow managed to make useful stuff out of this extraordinary substance, and even though it doesn't have a name, people have already affectionately dubbed it a 'magnetic turd'.

A recent video of the slime was shared on TikTok by Dr. Karan Raj (@dr.karanr), who has more than 4.7 million followers.

In the clip, he says: "This magnetic robot made of slime could one day save your life.

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"This magnetic slime ball has a custard-like consistency, and can squeeze through narrow objects.

"It can be manipulated by an external magnet to reach out to nearby objects and grasp them. In fact, it can even be damaged, destroyed and cut, and demonstrate self-healing properties.

"The hope is that one day it can be used inside the human body to retrieve swallowed foreign objects."

The slime was originally created by Professor Li Zhang and her colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This powerful substance contains magnetic particles that can be easily manipulated and travel across narrow substances and gaps and can easily mould into various shapes. 

When a peer-reviewed paper was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, Zhang assured the world that it wasn't an April fool's joke.

Talking to The Guardian, the professor said: "The ultimate goal is to deploy it like a robot. We still consider it as fundamental research – trying to understand its material properties."

She explained how it has 'visco-elastic properties', meaning it 'sometimes behaves like a solid, sometimes it behaves like a liquid.'

Since the magnetic particles are toxic to the human body, the researchers covered the slime in a layer of silica, which would protect the human body - in theory, of course. "The safety [would] also strongly depend on how long you would keep them inside of your body,” Zhang said.

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Though the world si deeply impressed by this new research, many couldn't help but draw comparisons to certain movies like: Venom, Flubber and Terminator 2.

One user commented: "T-1000 version 0.1. Eventually it will look like Robert Patrick." Another wrote: "I think a movie in the '90s came out showing us why this is a bad idea."

A third commented: "Aww hell naw Venom is becoming a real thing." Another wrote: "How many movies do we have to make before we accept that this is a colossally horrible idea?"

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