Spiders Use Earth's Electric Field to Fly Hundreds of Miles (2018)(theatlantic.com)
theatlantic.com
Spiders Use Earth's Electric Field to Fly Hundreds of Miles (2018)
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-electric-flight-of-spiders/564437/
38 comments
There is a beautifully illustrated arxiv paper Ballooning Spiders: The Case for Electrostatic Flight by Peter W. Gorham
at https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4731, which is a good read, if you want to get a bit more into the subject.
Discussed last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17465068.
FWIW, I saw a small (~1cm length x >1mm wide) caterpillar doing this once in the woods. I thought it was dangling from a tree but then it just kept going.
More like a showerthought, but:
If arachnids are able to detect magnetic fields and react accordingly, are humans also able to do the same?
Anecdotally, I've always had people commenting on how their mood is down when it is storming outside, and that they feel a 'negative energy' that doesn't motivate them to do anything. So I wonder if there is a relation?
If arachnids are able to detect magnetic fields and react accordingly, are humans also able to do the same?
Anecdotally, I've always had people commenting on how their mood is down when it is storming outside, and that they feel a 'negative energy' that doesn't motivate them to do anything. So I wonder if there is a relation?
Veritasium has a possibly-relevant video on negative ions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ--scjcAZ4
Wow, dude really goes all out to explain / prove it politely.
Thanks for the video. Never heard of Veritasium before, now one of my new favorite youtubers
Thanks for the video. Never heard of Veritasium before, now one of my new favorite youtubers
There's a video version of the University of Bristol research story too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRrUxi6d7so
This article seems like a spoiler for Children of Time
Just don't tell Randy. (https://xkcd.com/8/)
>This idea—flight by electrostatic repulsion—was first proposed in the early 1800s, around the time of Darwin’s voyage. Peter Gorham, a physicist, resurrected the idea in 2013, and showed that it was mathematically plausible. And now, Morley and Robert have tested it with actual spiders.
>First, they showed that spiders can detect electric fields. They put the arachnids on vertical strips of cardboard in the center of a plastic box, and then generated electric fields between the floor and ceiling of similar strengths to what the spiders would experience outdoors. These fields ruffled tiny sensory hairs on the spiders’ feet, known as trichobothria. “It’s like when you rub a balloon and hold it up to your hairs,” Morley says.
>In response, the spiders performed a set of movements called tiptoeing—they stood on the ends of their legs and stuck their abdomens in the air. “That behavior is only ever seen before ballooning,” says Morley. Many of the spiders actually managed to take off, despite being in closed boxes with no airflow within them. And when Morley turned off the electric fields inside the boxes, the ballooning spiders dropped.
One amazing thing to me is how this is the sort of experiment that an educated layman could do in his garage without the need for millions of dollars in funding and a research institute. Quaint and inspiring to aspiring citizen scientists at the same time.
>First, they showed that spiders can detect electric fields. They put the arachnids on vertical strips of cardboard in the center of a plastic box, and then generated electric fields between the floor and ceiling of similar strengths to what the spiders would experience outdoors. These fields ruffled tiny sensory hairs on the spiders’ feet, known as trichobothria. “It’s like when you rub a balloon and hold it up to your hairs,” Morley says.
>In response, the spiders performed a set of movements called tiptoeing—they stood on the ends of their legs and stuck their abdomens in the air. “That behavior is only ever seen before ballooning,” says Morley. Many of the spiders actually managed to take off, despite being in closed boxes with no airflow within them. And when Morley turned off the electric fields inside the boxes, the ballooning spiders dropped.
One amazing thing to me is how this is the sort of experiment that an educated layman could do in his garage without the need for millions of dollars in funding and a research institute. Quaint and inspiring to aspiring citizen scientists at the same time.
I find the term "citizen scientist" really annoying. Either you are a scientist or you aren't. If you do science you are a scientist. Point. No need to add any other adjetive. Science should not act like a club with first class and second class members.
This has also now spread to the world of software development, in the context of large management consultancies selling services to companies that want software without those pesky expensive Devs.
Strangely enough, I have been unable to find their definition for Citizen Management Consultants...
https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/citizen-developer/
Strangely enough, I have been unable to find their definition for Citizen Management Consultants...
https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/citizen-developer/
'Citizen Developer' sounds a bit like a corporate euphemism for a guard job at a gulag for political dissidents.
How do you define an expensive developer though? I mean in academia you have paperwork to prove it, but what are the criteria for distinct here?
Science often requires if no other resource extensive time and it comes to pass people out there will pay you to invest your time in it only if you are a first class member as attested to by a degree and position. Most of the people who are indeed first class end up as first class members.
Citizen scientist seems to me to denote that one is actually a scientist despite lacking credentials unlike the 5000 other crackpots. To call someone who has no credentials a scientist would be misleading thus the term has utility and meaning.
Citizen scientist seems to me to denote that one is actually a scientist despite lacking credentials unlike the 5000 other crackpots. To call someone who has no credentials a scientist would be misleading thus the term has utility and meaning.
It’s useful to talk about people who are self funded/ directed vs people who are part of an institution like a corporation or university.
Why is this so necessary currently? Nobody describes Einstein as a citizen scientist even when its main contributions were self funded. Describing Darwin, Mendel or Tesla as citizen scientists would be plain ridiculous. Science is not a religion, is a tool.
It’s pretty informal. I believe you’re reading too far into it.
Like most words it covers an inexact group of things often relevant to the context it’s used. From the context we can understand ‘citizen scientist’ to mean some curious old/young person in their garage (not literally always their garage) doing it for fun. Which itself doesn’t have to exclude the professionals with a side project.
Like most words it covers an inexact group of things often relevant to the context it’s used. From the context we can understand ‘citizen scientist’ to mean some curious old/young person in their garage (not literally always their garage) doing it for fun. Which itself doesn’t have to exclude the professionals with a side project.
I share your egalitarian spirit, but I you're a little off here.
I don't think there's anything demeaning or low-class in being a "citizen scientist" or an amateur (which means someone who does something for the love of it, "ama"). And I think it's proper to give respect to those who have gone the distance to become professional scientists. Certainly the few scientists I've been honored to meet pretty much are on a different level than us amateurs.
I don't think there's anything demeaning or low-class in being a "citizen scientist" or an amateur (which means someone who does something for the love of it, "ama"). And I think it's proper to give respect to those who have gone the distance to become professional scientists. Certainly the few scientists I've been honored to meet pretty much are on a different level than us amateurs.
> Science should not act like a club with first class and second class members.
Science isn’t the club; academia is.
Normally, when we say “scientist”, we mean “academic scientist”—i.e. someone who does science specifically for the enculturated ideals of academia (e.g. the advancement of common knowledge) using the process of academia (e.g. writing papers and sending them off to journals, attending conferences, etc.)
(You might define “academic scientist” in other ways, with something about a treadmill of papers and grants, but I would point out that any definition of academic science has to include tenured science professors, who aren’t subject to the same forces.)
Since academia (i.e. the global cooperation of academics to further knowledge by writing, reading and reviewing papers) is seen, by academics, as an unalloyed good, they see scientists who don’t take part in said academia to be doing something strange, something perhaps sub-optimal for the furthering of scientific knowledge.
And I feel like that’s maybe true, but also often misjudged: many “citizen scientists” are actually academic scientists. They may not be funded by a university or submit papers to Nature, but they collaborate and are in constant communication with people who do, such that their work isn’t advancing the boundaries of science any less optimally than their own work is.
Just the first example off the top of my head: Destin Sandlin, who some might call a “citizen scientist” (he’s a YouTuber who does science journalism but also often his own scientific experiments) works more heavily with “academic scientists” to do his experiments, than most University grad students ever even bother to do. He might be a “travelling” scientist instead of belonging to any particular institution, but he’s certainly an academic through-and-through.
Science isn’t the club; academia is.
Normally, when we say “scientist”, we mean “academic scientist”—i.e. someone who does science specifically for the enculturated ideals of academia (e.g. the advancement of common knowledge) using the process of academia (e.g. writing papers and sending them off to journals, attending conferences, etc.)
(You might define “academic scientist” in other ways, with something about a treadmill of papers and grants, but I would point out that any definition of academic science has to include tenured science professors, who aren’t subject to the same forces.)
Since academia (i.e. the global cooperation of academics to further knowledge by writing, reading and reviewing papers) is seen, by academics, as an unalloyed good, they see scientists who don’t take part in said academia to be doing something strange, something perhaps sub-optimal for the furthering of scientific knowledge.
And I feel like that’s maybe true, but also often misjudged: many “citizen scientists” are actually academic scientists. They may not be funded by a university or submit papers to Nature, but they collaborate and are in constant communication with people who do, such that their work isn’t advancing the boundaries of science any less optimally than their own work is.
Just the first example off the top of my head: Destin Sandlin, who some might call a “citizen scientist” (he’s a YouTuber who does science journalism but also often his own scientific experiments) works more heavily with “academic scientists” to do his experiments, than most University grad students ever even bother to do. He might be a “travelling” scientist instead of belonging to any particular institution, but he’s certainly an academic through-and-through.
Academia is a patrilineal network. It has nothing to do with conferences or journals (which exist outside of academia). It’s a simple matter of whether you can convince a committee of past PhDs to declare that you too have earned a PhD. That earns you the right to be on a PhD committee for someone else, and to be hired as “an academic”.
Then repeat the whole process except instead of a PhD, it’s tenure.
It’s purely a membership based organization. It’s a federation of treehouses with a rope ladders.
Then repeat the whole process except instead of a PhD, it’s tenure.
It’s purely a membership based organization. It’s a federation of treehouses with a rope ladders.
People confuse academia with credentialism. Credentialism is a parasite that has long infested academia (ever since nobles wanted to send their children to study under the famous Greek philosophers) and now presents as its face. But academia existed long before Universities gave out credentials; in fact, long before Universities had undergraduate programs.
The Universities were, originally, just cloisters of academic scientists doing research (and sharing lab space), that you—as another academic scientist—would visit to exchange knowledge. And, guess what? Universities are still that. You don’t need to have a Ph.D (or the desire to gain one) to travel to any random University campus, walk into a research laboratory, and exchange knowledge with the people there. The core function of academia still goes on, though it is encircled by the parasite of credentialism. Or you can avoid Universities, and just work with academics directly through academic organizations, like one of the many Royal Societies in the Commonwealth, or through “industrial-academic partnership” organizations like the IETF.
Academia still exists even at the heart of purely-industrial think tanks, and government organizations, as long as they hire people with the enculturated mindset of academia. You think you can’t just walk into NASA, or Boston Dynamics, and ask their research scientists stuff? You can. Because they’re academic scientists, and so they will exchange knowledge with you (as another academic scientist) and consider it part of their vocation, whether it counts as paid job-hours or not.
The Universities were, originally, just cloisters of academic scientists doing research (and sharing lab space), that you—as another academic scientist—would visit to exchange knowledge. And, guess what? Universities are still that. You don’t need to have a Ph.D (or the desire to gain one) to travel to any random University campus, walk into a research laboratory, and exchange knowledge with the people there. The core function of academia still goes on, though it is encircled by the parasite of credentialism. Or you can avoid Universities, and just work with academics directly through academic organizations, like one of the many Royal Societies in the Commonwealth, or through “industrial-academic partnership” organizations like the IETF.
Academia still exists even at the heart of purely-industrial think tanks, and government organizations, as long as they hire people with the enculturated mindset of academia. You think you can’t just walk into NASA, or Boston Dynamics, and ask their research scientists stuff? You can. Because they’re academic scientists, and so they will exchange knowledge with you (as another academic scientist) and consider it part of their vocation, whether it counts as paid job-hours or not.
> Either you are a scientist or you aren't. If you do science you are a scientist. Point. No need to add any other adjective. Science should not act like a club with first class and second class members.
I hear you, but I'm curious why "citizen" sounds diminutive to your ear. Alternatives I've heard people use are "amatuer", "non-professional" or "backyard" scientist which all have a negative connotation to me. Honestly, I think using "citizen scientist" is to differentiate themselves from non-scientists who claim to be performing science:
1. Professional Scientists (professionals educated in a particular field of science) 2. Citizen Scientists (people attempting to do science, who recognize they are not professionals) 3. Self-described "scientists" (people ignore scientific method and reject science conflicting with their beliefs: industry lobbyists, homeopaths, flat-earthers, etc)
By making space for second-class members it means you can more easily have a club of people trying to do science (#1 and #2) and exclude #3 who seek to hijack science for their own personal purposes.
I hear you, but I'm curious why "citizen" sounds diminutive to your ear. Alternatives I've heard people use are "amatuer", "non-professional" or "backyard" scientist which all have a negative connotation to me. Honestly, I think using "citizen scientist" is to differentiate themselves from non-scientists who claim to be performing science:
1. Professional Scientists (professionals educated in a particular field of science) 2. Citizen Scientists (people attempting to do science, who recognize they are not professionals) 3. Self-described "scientists" (people ignore scientific method and reject science conflicting with their beliefs: industry lobbyists, homeopaths, flat-earthers, etc)
By making space for second-class members it means you can more easily have a club of people trying to do science (#1 and #2) and exclude #3 who seek to hijack science for their own personal purposes.
Sounds right "citizen politician", "citizen journalist", "citizen dishwasher" or "citizen greengrocer"?. The opposite term to citizen is foreigner/immigrant. Should we start describing scientist in terms of foreigner and non-foreigner scientists? Related to where? The city that holds the headquarters of the scientific journal?
Lets call things by their name. Citizen scientists is just another euphemism for precariat.
Lets call things by their name. Citizen scientists is just another euphemism for precariat.
It's interesting that it also triggered their ballooning, the mad scientist in me wonders if you could create a big field over a large area (like your back yard) and trigger a mass exodus of spiders.
Or attempt a weird version of this raining upwards trick from Now You See Me 2, but with spiders... https://youtu.be/6qBwKnh99ck
This mass-ballooning has occurred in Australia from the spiders fear of drowning from heavy rains.
In theory, your idea sounds plausible :)
In theory, your idea sounds plausible :)
haha sounds like a bad/good startup idea: Green NoHarm Spider pest control
If a layman did the experiment on his garage, it would be completely (and insistently) ignored by the scientific community for many reasons (most of them good ones).
2nd top story at the moment is about a 13 year old's research into the noise generated by hand dryers.
Why is that? If it's a properly conducted experiment with good documentation why do you think the larger scientific community would ignore this?
Yes, I do.
It's not published, it has no path to get into the attention of researchers. There's nothing a researcher can tell beforehand that says that all that documentation is high quality instead of just random trash. Laymen language does not align with academics ones. There are huge personal biases on every academic area.
This happens all the time, by the way.
It's not published, it has no path to get into the attention of researchers. There's nothing a researcher can tell beforehand that says that all that documentation is high quality instead of just random trash. Laymen language does not align with academics ones. There are huge personal biases on every academic area.
This happens all the time, by the way.
>>Yes, I do.
Do what?
>>It's not published, it has no path to get into the attention of researchers.
I mean, there's nothing that stops this hypothetical spider-man from publishing? If I was going through the trouble of doing independent spider research and came across something I found novel and groundbreaking, that's what I'd do.
Also, you still haven't stated your "many good reasons" for why this would be ignored other than "it (hypothetically) isn't published". You make a lot of assumptions, basically that people not working in academic settings are incapable of a-using language compatible with getting published and b- wouldn't want to get published which aren't true.
>>This happens all the time, by the way.
Of course it does. But "people in academia are still people and therefore accountable to their own biases and prejudicial decision making" doesn't fall under "good reasons to ignore a study" imo.
Do what?
>>It's not published, it has no path to get into the attention of researchers.
I mean, there's nothing that stops this hypothetical spider-man from publishing? If I was going through the trouble of doing independent spider research and came across something I found novel and groundbreaking, that's what I'd do.
Also, you still haven't stated your "many good reasons" for why this would be ignored other than "it (hypothetically) isn't published". You make a lot of assumptions, basically that people not working in academic settings are incapable of a-using language compatible with getting published and b- wouldn't want to get published which aren't true.
>>This happens all the time, by the way.
Of course it does. But "people in academia are still people and therefore accountable to their own biases and prejudicial decision making" doesn't fall under "good reasons to ignore a study" imo.
> Is not published,
Correct, but we are talking about it, somehow, and has been uploaded to internet, accessible from most countries of the planet, without restrictions at any time of day or night
> It has no path to get into the attention of researchers
maybe they could google it
Correct, but we are talking about it, somehow, and has been uploaded to internet, accessible from most countries of the planet, without restrictions at any time of day or night
> It has no path to get into the attention of researchers
maybe they could google it
https://youtu.be/Ja4oMFOoK50
This one contains more real examples of them ballooning:
https://youtu.be/VDL9VxLqdvw