Posted on 07/05/2018 5:31:12 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
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,”
Darwin thought that electricity might be involved when he noticed that spider silk stands seemed to repel each other with electrostatic force...
Peter Gorham, a physicist at the University of Hawaii, calculated that it was theoretically possible for spiders to use their silk to conduct static electricity as a means to fly, but Morley’s team is the first to confirm this in the laboratory.
(Excerpt) Read more at motherboard.vice.com ...
If a spider can do it, how long until aircraft can do it?
“conduct static electricity”
Now that’s a neat trick.
If a spider can do it, how long until aircraft can do it?
REMEMBER THE HINDENBERG!
And a bit of electrostatic action.
I was thinking of very fast, quiet craft that can start and flash away at incredible speed.
They aren’t UFOs...they are Spidermen.
How do spiders behave under high-tension powerlines?
This idea accounts for all the previously unexplained ballooning phenomena. For example, it explains how spiders achieve such a high velocity in conditions of little or no wind. It also explains how such large spiders are able to generate lift. These produce several strands that each acquire charge and generate lift. And it explains why these strands fan out from each other—because their negative charges repel. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2013/09/23/ballooning-spiders-fly-without-wind/#.Wz66oHZKjBx
Not my line of work but, I doubt you could scale it up to a useful size?
Perhaps a small start-up, followed by a pump and dump operation.
Yes, that’s the ticket!
Whenever I see a new discovery in nature, I have to believe there are some bigger geeks than us looking at it, turning it around, and thinking much bigger.
Combined with other stuff, it might be the burst of movement that starts a process that piggybacks onto something else.
Inventions often result from weird connections.
OSHA requirements limit crane operations to a minimum clearance of 10 feet for lines rated at 50 kilovolts...
Unsure about flying spiders.
Would they be at ground potential?
60 cycle buzz?
If all of the strands of web are negatively charged and the Earth's surface is negatively charged with respect to the clouds, then it would make sense for the spiders to be repelled away from the Earth and toward the sky.
This would explain their ability to launch quickly from the ground even in low wind conditions.
However, in order to move across the Earth they would either have to be blown by the wind or they would have to encounter some sort of lateral voltage gradient.
Ask Ben Franklin about static charges?
Inventions often result from weird connections.
“Connections” by James Burke
How invention are linked...
A superb read, And IIRC also a lecture series.
Good stuff! Your library can get it for you.
Buy on the rumor, and sell on the news...
Already been thought of.
Space tether for power and propulsion .
The only question is, would spider silk be better than the Aluminum tape this inventor suggest.
A bit more here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4731
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