It could replace cartilage in knees and even help create soft robots

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s ‘super jelly’ — a bizarre new material that can survive being run over by a car even though it’s composed of 80 per cent water.

The ‘glass-like hydrogel’ may look and feel like a squishy jelly, but when compressed it acts like shatterproof glass, its University of Cambridge developers said.

It is formed using a network of polymers held together by a series of reversible chemical interactions that can be tailored to control the gel’s mechanical properties.