It was half a century agoEdward Lorentz, an American mathematician and mathematician, once asked whether a butterfly with its wings flapping in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas by a chaotic domino effect.
The question could have been equally well-known if he asked if enough locusts with their wings flapping could charge the air like a storm. We now have the answer.
New research has shown that the power of flying insects over atmospheric electric fields can be as strong as the effect of swirling clouds filled with water vapor.
Although this does not mean we need to worry about the biblical plagues caused by lightning-shooting locusts, it may be evidence of the need to account biological phenomena when modeling localized patterns. Atmospheric Electric Field.
Zoom in on the atoms that make up dust, moisture and insect body parts, and you will see electrons jostling in the air like loose change in an runner’s pocket.
With enough jostling, the negatively-charged particles can escape from their positively charged pockets and create a difference called a Potential Gradient.
Small ice particles can rise on columns of air and rub against larger pieces tumbling towards ground. This creates a conveyor belt of charges that magnifies potential gradients between cloud tops, ground bottoms, or the ground below.
The effects of the build-up charge are visible, but not invisible. The gradient becomes too steep and ionized channels are formed. This balance is then effectively balanced in a rush that we can see. lightning.
Even without lightning, zones with contrasting charges can influence the movement of ions. This includes various pollutants, dust particles, and other pollutants.
There are many factors that can influence the size and position of potential gradients. These include cloud movements, precipitation, and even human behavior. Showers of cosmic raysHowever, until now, no one had considered the effects of biological phenomena.
“We have always considered how physics influences biology. But, at some point, it became apparent that biology could also influence physics.” SaysEllard Hunting was the first author of the study, and he is a biologist from the University of Bristol in the UK.
“We are interested in how different organisms utilize the static electric fields that can be found almost everywhere in the environment.”
Invertebrates and insects can have charges that limit their ability to harm the environment. This has been clear for some time. Baby spiders could even be charged with a potential to harm the surrounding environment. This trick is usefulThey can launch themselves into space.
However, it has not been possible to determine how these tiny potential aggregates are distributed in swarms. Hunting and his team travelled to a University of Bristol School of Veterinary Sciences field station in order to wait for the swarming of one of their honeybee colonies.
Researchers used an electric field monitor to track the potential gradient of a bee swarm while it was in transit. The potential gradient overhead was raised by as much as 100 volts per meter during the 3 minute period when the insects flew past.
An analysis later confirmed that the voltage was linked to the concentration of the swarm, which allowed the researchers to predict with reasonable certainty how a certain number of bees in a specific area of air might impact the atmosphere’s charge.
Their estimates proved to be accurate, so the team applied the same reasoning to other insects in swarms.
Researchers calculated that a large locust population could produce charges comparable to electrical storms by taking the individual charges for locusts, and then scaling it up to plague size numbers.
“Interdisciplinarity is valuable here – electric charge can seem like it lives solely in physics, but it is important to know how aware the whole natural world is of electricity in the atmosphere,” says Giles Harrison, an atmospheric physicist from the University of Reading.
At the other end of the scale, that tornado-risking agent of chaos – the butterfly – would need to work together in vast numbers to have any hope of altering the atmosphere’s voltage by any significant extent.
It’s probably for the best.
This research was published in iScience.
