The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The fascinating tricks spiders use to get up, up and away.<\/strong> “Every day, around 40,000 thunderstorms crackle around the world, collectively turning Earth\u2019s atmosphere into a giant electrical circuit. The upper reaches of the atmosphere have a positive charge, and the planet\u2019s surface has a negative one. Even on sunny days with cloudless skies, the air carries a voltage of around 100 volts for every meter above the ground. In foggy or stormy conditions, that gradient might increase to tens of thousands of volts per meter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ballooning spiders operate within this planetary electric field. When their silk leaves their bodies, it typically picks up a negative charge. This repels the similar negative charges on the surfaces on which the spiders sit, creating enough force to lift them into the air. And spiders can increase those forces by climbing onto twigs, leaves, or blades of grass. Plants, being earthed, have the same negative charge as the ground that they grow upon, but they protrude into the positively charged air. This creates substantial electric fields between the air around them and the tips of their leaves and branches\u2014and the spiders ballooning from those tips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n This idea\u2014flight by electrostatic repulsion\u2014was first proposed in the early 1800s, around the time of Darwin\u2019s 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2018\/07\/the-electric-flight-of-spiders\/564437\/<\/a><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine.
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