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Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: On Halloween in 1832, the naturalist Charles Darwin was onboard the HMS Beagle. He marveled at spiders that had landed on the ship after floating across huge ocean distances. "I caught some of the Aeronaut spiders which must have come at least 60 miles," he noted in his diary. "How inexplicable is the cause which induces these small insects, as it now appears in both hemispheres, to undertake their aerial excursions." Small spiders achieve flight by aiming their butts at the sky and releasing tendrils of silk to generate lift.
Darwin thought that electricity might be involved when he noticed that spider silk stands seemed to repel each other with electrostatic force, but many scientists assumed that the arachnids, known as "ballooning" spiders, were simply sailing on the wind like a paraglider. The wind power explanation has thus far been unable to account for observations of spiders rapidly launching into the air, even when winds are low, however. Now, these aerial excursions have been empirically determined to be largely powered by electricity, according to new research published Thursday in Current Biology. Led by Erica Morley, a sensory biophysicist at the University of Bristol, the study settles a longstanding debate about whether wind energy or electrostatic forces are responsible for spider ballooning locomotion.
Darwin thought that electricity might be involved when he noticed that spider silk stands seemed to repel each other with electrostatic force, but many scientists assumed that the arachnids, known as "ballooning" spiders, were simply sailing on the wind like a paraglider. The wind power explanation has thus far been unable to account for observations of spiders rapidly launching into the air, even when winds are low, however. Now, these aerial excursions have been empirically determined to be largely powered by electricity, according to new research published Thursday in Current Biology. Led by Erica Morley, a sensory biophysicist at the University of Bristol, the study settles a longstanding debate about whether wind energy or electrostatic forces are responsible for spider ballooning locomotion.
Spiders invented electric vehicles before humans.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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Bill hit 50% or greater in virtually every election he was in. The only times he didn't, there were strong third party offers that soaked up votes. He did loose two elections, but then out of over 20 years of politicking, i'd have to say that's pretty good.
As for Hillary, you may not like her because you've been conditioned to by the fascists at Fox News, but here's two things to remember.... Even if that was the only reason she was in politics, she still had a far better and more effective career that Trump the dickless draft dodger. The second thing to remember is... she won the popular vote over Trump.
So you have Trump in office, with the help of Russia, years of republicans in congress abusing their offices to denigrate Hillary, and all the neo-nazi pieces of shit are happy. Back when i was young, we knew the Nazis were the fucking enemy of this country, and Russia was our enemies decades. And lets be clear, if you agree with a neo-nazi's positions and support one... you ARE a fucking neo-nazi; you may be too fucking stupid to understand that, but it doesn't change the fact that's what you are.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's