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Fungus Fire Spores With 180,000 G Acceleration
Hugh Pickens writes "Although a variety of spore discharge processes have evolved among the fungi, those with the longest ranges are powered by hydrostatic pressure and include 'squirt guns' that are most common in the Ascomycota and Zygomycota. In these fungi, fluid-filled stalks that support single spores or spore-filled sporangia, or cells called asci that contain multiple spores, are pressurized by osmosis. Because spores are discharged at such high speeds, most of the information on launch processes from previous studies has been inferred from mathematical models and is subject to a number of errors, but now Nicholas Money, an expert on fungi at Miami University, has recorded the discharges with high-speed cameras at 250,000 frames-a-second and discovered that fungi fire their spores with accelerations up to 180,000 g, calling it 'the fastest flight in nature.' Money and his students, in a justified fit of ecstasy, have created a video of the first fungus opera."
Nature has other fast biological processes. I will cite the Nematocyst cells that jellyfish employ to inject poison into their victims.
... when the cell is stimulated, it squeezes and fires the rope out through the small opening on the outside of the cell and sends a rigid looking line instantly out several feet. This was thought to be one of the fastest biological processes for a while as estimates have placed the force on these coils to be 40,000 g to millions of gs.
Essentially creatures like jellyfish have cells that contain what looks like a coiled rope marinating in poison
I saw a discovery channel special on this once and the video footage they showed up close of these cells reacting just gave you a skin crawling sensation all over your body. But after seeing that, it's no wonder certain box jellyfish or the Portuguese Man O' Wars (not actually jellyfish but a colony of Siphonophorae) can put poison through your skin, through your flesh and down to your bones/organs instantly.
My work here is dung.
I'm guessing you've got little problems with receiving grants?
Fungus fires spores, or
Fungi fire spores
Pick one or the other
Zerg Spore Colonies in Starcraft. Better get 'em while they're young, from a safe distance. Watch for the rush.
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I would have called it the quickest flight in nature, but that's not entirely accurate either.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Nicholas Money has taken some video "shots" of these fungi firing their spores everywhere?
Perhaps, if we were to plant spore sacs in your brain organ and let its tendrils spread through your flesh, then you would truly understand Juffo-Wup... become part of Juffo-Wup.
I have to see a starship firing off missiles with this kind of action. Replace fungal-goo with plasma, spore with warhead, and you'd have an awesomely unique design concept for space weaponry.
+ G to tha Izzo, A to tha Tizee, Talking Giz-oat, Ya'll Bettah Feel Me... +
That's another variation on the concept of Xeno's Paradox, really (wiki it). In both cases, in order for this to be an actual paradox, time would have to be infinitely smooth, as in not have a minimum possible unit - you can keep on having shorter and shorter amounts of time.
From what I understand, because time and distance seem to be granular (with the minimum units being Planck distance and Planck seconds or something like that), the whole problem gets avoided since EVERYTHING is granular and the deceleration from one moment to the next (even before a full stop) would go in a kind of quantum way - either you're at a speed of 1000 planck distances per planck second, or you're at 999 planck distances per planck second, not 999.99 p/p etc.
It made sense at the time I heard it, but you know, that was undergrad and I was probably really high.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Bombardier beetle.
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Do any of these spores thrive under Bertold rays and have miraculous healing properties on humans, such as regrowth of a removed appendix?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
This was discussed on Quirks and Quarks, a fantastic science news show on the CBC, a few weeks back (link to the show here, available as an mp3, or ogg).
It was a really interesting segment, have a listen. The show is also available as a weekly podcast, and I can't reccomend it enough.
Hurrah for public radio!
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
You have clearly not eaten enough of the fungus to understand.
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That's easily solved by Calculus. An infinite number of additions can result in a finite number.
Example: Consider 1/3 (one third)
Written our it's 0,3333333333333....
You can turn that into a sum namely
0,3 + 0,03 + 0,003 + 0,0003 + .....
You can write that as a sum //Forgive the crappyness of plain-text // Slashdot is many years behind on this one...
Sum from n=1 to n=infinity of 3/10^n
So here it is, a infinite sum making a finite number. Glad to have busted that one.
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For anybody who cares, the correct number is not 180 000 Gs of acceleration. It's really 180 000 meters per second squared, which gives about 18 000 Gs.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.