Researchers have discovered how some spiders can fly by using electromagnetic forces in the environment. Researchers from Notre Dame University-Louaize in Lebanon, Charbel Habchi and Mohammad K. Jawed, have precisely simulated the method by which spiders may drift and float like a balloon utilising electrostatic forces or air currents.
The study, which was published in Physical Review E, emphasises the importance of spiders’ spatial arrangement of threads as they fly. The study outlines the force balance that controls if the spider would fly or not.
According to the study, forces acting on a silk strand of spider assist it in rising from the ground. Spiders may be using the air that rises after being warmed by the Sun, as per one possible explanation. The static electric charge on a spider’s threads might be affected by the weak vertical electrical fields of the environment, according to the second interpretation.
Researchers used an algorithm created by the computer graphics community to explain the event. ‘Several hit Hollywood movies, such as The Hobbit and the Planet of the Apes series, have used this formulation for fur and hair’, Charbel Habchi told Rachel Berkowitz, editor for Physics.
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Each spider thread is split into several spaghetti-like segments that may twist, stretch and bend in the algorithm. The researcher applied a 2-mm-wide solid sphere with 2, 4 or 8 threads vertically mounted on top of it to simulate an Erigone spider. Electric charges were then applied to the individual threads. The spider was witnessed being lifted off the ground by an electric field. Meanwhile, the charged linked threads remained in place at first, but due to the repulsion force between them, they eventually spread apart.
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