New adhesive is so sticky it can glue a rubber duck to a seaside rock

New water-resistant hydrogels, designed with the help of machine learning, are more adhesive than any comparable materials found in nature. The hydrogels were developed with the aid of an algorithm trained on the adhesives produced by natural organisms, such as geckos and mussels. The researchers that created them suggest that the new substances could have applications in areas such as surgery, marine farming and deep-sea exploration.