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"Ballooning" Spiders Use Electrostatic Forces To Generate Lift
KentuckyFC writes "Many types of small spider release threads into the air which then lift and carry them significant distances. Biologists have found them at altitudes of up to 4 km. The conventional thinking is that the threads catch thermal air currents which then carry them away but this does not explain how spiders perform their trick even when there is little or no wind. Now one physicist says the explanation is the atmosphere's natural electric field which has an average downward-pointing magnitude of 120 Volts per metre. He calculates that a strand of silk need only gain a negative charge of around 30 nanoCoulombs to lift a spider. That explains how the spiders take off on windless days, how they reach such great heights and how several strands can lift heavier spiders of up to 100 milligrams."
Does this explain how Spider-Man can shoot and then swing on webs that are attached to... what? Clouds? The International Space Station?
I, for one, welcome our new electromagnetic surfing spider overlords.
"Of course, Gorham’s ideas will need to be tested by actually measuring the charge on gossamer spider silk as it is generated. That’s an experiment for an enterprising biologist to take on."
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Stories like this are the reason i frequent /.
This really bugs me.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
To me stuff like this is what proves evolution. There is no one in their right mind who could sit there and convince me that such an obtuse solution to move from point A to point B is "by design", vs. random evolution.
So if a human being is about 7,000,000 times heavier than a spider, would a scaled up thread charged at -0.21 coulombs allow us to fly?
The bat signal itself doesn't fit with physics.
My parents have owned a searchlight rental business for 30 years now. For the first Batman movie they were asked to put a bat signal cutout on the searchlight to simulate the bat signal. The thing is that searchlights have too high a candlepower and the light just bends around the cutout. The light spreads more the farther away from the searchlight. It looks cool when shown against a wall, but far out in the sky it simply doesn't work. The physics of light doesn't allow it.
So why are we unable to tap the planets electric field? Can someone explain this a little more. Seems like that is a power source just waiting to be tapped. Unintented consequences like collapsing earths magnetic sphere aside.
That is what made the whole thing totally unbelievable for me too!
What about "lasers"? /Dr.Evil
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you'd need a lens, the cost would be immense
probably, syfy(lus) sucks.
0.21 Coulombs would give you a very good shock.
The rule in my house is that if you have more than four limbs, you are a bug , and you belong outdoors. This policy is clearly stated on the signs underneath each door.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
you'd need a lens, the cost would be immense
Not for billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Nevertheless, if you watch the first Batmovie when the Batsignal is introduced it is shown with a genuine searchlight with a cardboard cutout.
It's just a movie... :P
What about using a much larger cutout, much further from the light? They don't have to be attached unless you need to point it.
NSA and DOD will have a nervous breakdown trying to build a drone the size of a small spider that can make silk.
Life imitates glitching :)
I mean this sounds exactly like some games that have double-jump and other glitches. Officially nothing is supposed to float unless it's lighter than air, but in reality there's about six (known) ways to exploit aspects of the world that were 'never intended' to end up with flight. Much like with videogame physics some animal figures out a trick, then keeps iterating until that trick is an art, then a science, and finally a way of life :)
Do they know that they are using an electric field to generate lift?
Yes. It's not the candlepower, it's just the optics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T1N2_I8hHQ Surprised they wouldn't include a video when they talk about something so crazy. I've never seen these maybe they aren't in my part of the world.
Tesla was a mysticist quack by the end of his life, endlessly promising inventions that he didn't have designs for and must seem impossible. He was a great scientist and experimenter in his early career, sure. He was a quack by the end.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
So how long until I can use this technology to finally get my flaying car?
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
So how long until this technology can be used to build the flying car I've been promised for several decades?
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Tesla was a mysticist quack by the end of his life, endlessly promising inventions that he didn't have designs for and must seem impossible. He was a great scientist and experimenter in his early career, sure. He was a quack by the end.
OK... the interview quoted, if you bothered to check the link, was given in 1911, long before his so-called slide into madness.
For the record, one of the things Tesla spoke about that gave people back then cause to question his sanity was his theories about a method of sending video and audio signals through the air - technologies that we take for granted today.
So, probably less 'quack' and more 'a solid generation before his time.' But by all means, don't let that diminish your sense of mental superiority over the man who invented more stuff you use every day than I could list in a Slashdot post.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Maybe Gotham is in a very low ceiling bubble with the sky projected on it?
Somehow the "Electric Spider" sounds like it's right out of an early 80's night club choreography.
(yes, I know there was the Electric Slide, thank you)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I will have to read the research article because the press article doesn't explain it. a dipole charge would not move in a linear gradient field. it would require a second order curvature to the gradient to make it move. thus it's irrelevant that the linear field is 120 v /meter. what would matter is the derivative on that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
30 nanoCoulumbs = 6.24 Biiiiilllion electrons.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Can we duplicate this for a space elevator?
The problem was always that hundred mile cable, can use an incomplete cable link to float to orbit?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
> That is like saying "why would you use math to figure out the area of that rectangle when you can just guess randomly until you find a fitting number".
> Both solutions work but one is intelligent.
That's the same distinction between an old-school program that tells the machine exact instructions "go forward 3 meters, turn left, go 1 meter", vs. artificial intelligence - building a robot that can adapt to it's environment. Why make it adaptable when you can program in precise instructions to begin with?
The entire field of AI is based on the idea that adaptable is better. We know of about 8.7 million species, from ones that live in boiling acid to blue whales and humans. If you wanted to make million variations on something, is it smarter to explicitly design one, then the next, then another, nine million times, or is it more intelligent to design one or ten which have the ability to morph into whatever variation is required?
You're assuming hard-coding specific values is the smart way. In almost al cases, hard-coding is the dumb way to do things.
The cutout should have been placed very close to the focal point(where the arc lamp is) for the searchlight reflector to have any chance of focusing it. A cutout on the front of the searchlight is not at the focal point and will not focus without more optics.
The rule in my house is that if you have more than four limbs, you are a bug , and you belong outdoors. This policy is clearly stated on the signs underneath each door.
The true bugs tire of being misrepresented and politely suggest the colorful phrase "creepy crawlies" if you want an all-encompassing term for animals you don't want in your house.
The magnetic fields goes out of the atmosphere.. if the spider for some reason can't control its ascent, I'd guess it goes all the way up? Sounds like a new micro-satellite technology!
I'll believe this when someone takes some spider silk, charges it up, and it can lift an inanimate object of weight of a spider in still air.
What is blasting them with hype going to do?
I wonder if the same concept could be used to help relieve stress on the cables of space elevators? How much charge would it take to offset the weight of some amount of cable and can solve a measure of the strain problem?
yeah try putting a big piece of cardboard or wood or plastic anywhere within a foot of business end of searchlight and watch hiliarity ensue
Of course, Gorhamâ(TM)s ideas will need to be tested by actually measuring the charge on gossamer spider silk as it is generated.
Rather than trying to test it directly, just modulate the field in a room containing such a spider.
If the spider and its silk has a net charge you should be able to steer it around the room, land it where you want it, and measure the charge by the spider's response to the ambient field you're modulating. The attitude of the spider/silk system in the modified field will also give you the distribution of charge vs. weight on the spider and its silk.
If the spider and its silk doesn't have a net charge it will just hang there and blow around in the air currents.
(Of course the fanning out of the silk already proves the silk itself has a substantial charge.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Then he isn't very intelligent, is he?
Actually, researchers who use genetic algorithms to solve problems are extremely intelligent. "A genetic algorithm is a search heuristic that mimics the process of natural selection."
Natural selection itself, then, is the ultimate genetic algorithm, and the entity that created the process of natural selection is the ultimate intelligence.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
searchlights do have parabolic reflector. but see the issue is that at the focus there is arc lamp pumping out thousands of kilowatts of power. so maybe a weird custom bulb could be made....
Especially when you are hit in face by one of those spiders and the wild flaying of your arms and spastic twisting proof a great deal of current must be involved because there is no way a grown man could be that freaked out by a tiny spider baby.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Hey... Just imagine the trouble of training the sharks to paint a bat-signal in the sky with their lasers......