14 DAY TRIAL // A team of students now perfecting their understanding of physics at England's University of Leicester maintain that, according to their calculations, Spiderman's famous train-stopping stunt is actually quite plausible.
The students base their statements on the findings of a thorough investigation showing that, scaled-up, the silk produced by Darwin Bark's Spider (i.e. a species of spider whose silk is known to be twice as strong as the one produced by other similar arachnids) can, at least in theory, bring one such train to a standstill.
According to Huffington Post, this scaled-up spider silk would be able to generate a force of up to 300,000 newtons, which apparently is more than enough to gain control over four subway cars gone haywire.
“It is often quoted that spider-webs are stronger than steel, so we thought it would be interesting to see whether this held true for Spiderman's scaled-up version. Considering the subject matter we were surprised to find out that the webbing was portrayed accurately,” reads a statement issued by 21-year-old Alex Stone.