Scientists from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, are working on self-cleaning clothes: cotton cloth is coated with particles of titanium dioxide that need only sunlight to help break down carbon-based molecules. The inventors believe that these fabrics could be made into clothes that remove themselves dirt, environmental pollutants and harmful microorganisms.

Although the self-cleaning shirt is still a long way from reaching our shops (that’s very very bad news), the scientists might want to watch the 1951 movie “The Man in the White Suit”. Fearing that his invention might threaten their livelihoods, textile manufacturers arrested the inventor of fabric that never gets dirty to keep his fabric under wraps.

More in Nature, via Juliaset.