This is what the world's thinnest spaghetti looks like

The thinnest spaghetti we can eat comes from the town of Nuoro in Sardinia – the secret of its production is passed down from generation to generation in one family. A single strand of pasta su filindeu (in Sardinian it means “divine threads”) is only 0.4 millimeters in diameter. The scientific journal “Nanoscale Advances” published a recipe for even thinner spaghetti, but we are unlikely to make it at home.

To create spaghetti nanofibers, a team from the University College London (UCL) subjected a mixture of flour and formic acid to electrospinning. In this process, the hollow needle that holds the mixture and the metal plate on which it is deposited form the two ends of an electrical circuit. When the mixture flows from the needle onto the plate, it completes a circuit, creating thin fibers.

– To make spaghetti, flour dough is passed through metal holes. In our study, we did basically the same thing, only using an electric charge, explained Adam Clancy, co-author of the study.

In this way, the researchers managed to obtain threads with a diameter of 372 nanometers. This is approximately 200 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair and over 1000 times smaller than one strand. su filindeu. “Nanomacaron” took the form of a mat composed of microscopic fibers. The individual strands were too thin to see with the naked eye, so a scanning electron microscope was needed to measure and image them.

Thin spaghetti is not edible – it would overcook in less than a second before it could be removed from the pot. However, starch nanofibers have many other applications. Study co-author Gareth Williams explained that in the future they could be used to create wound dressings. This material is very porous, allowing air access but retaining microorganisms. It can also serve as a “scaffold” for bones regenerating after a fracture.

“Starch is a promising material because it is abundant, renewable and biodegradable, which means it can be broken down in the body,” Clancy added. – However, industrial starch purification requires many time-consuming processes. We have shown that a simpler way to produce nanofibers using flour is possible.

Scientists plan further research on “nanomapasta”. The next step is to examine the properties of this product – how quickly it breaks down, how it interacts with cells and whether it can be produced on a large scale.