Posted on 08/20/2023 2:11:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Likely developed 10,000 years ago by Aboriginal Australians, boomerangs may contain the design invention that makes flight possible.
The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off.
VIDEO: Was the boomerang the first aerofoil? As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.
For many years, scholars couldn't figure out how, exactly, a boomerang flew. Yet, in the last 50 years, scientists have realised that boomerangs are designed in a similar aerofoil manner as aeroplane wings, with each side or "wing" of a boomerang curved to give it aerodynamic lift. Therefore, whether intentional or not, the boomerang may have been a pivotal Indigenous predecessor to modern flight.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Bird wings. They’re curved. They fly in formation to take advantage of each others wakes in the wind.
When were birds invented?
Pave the way for the Wright Brothers? In a word: “No!”
Doesn’t mean Boomerangs aren’t cool, though!
While I cannot claim any knowledge of aeronautics, I don’t see how the boomerang could “pave the way” for flight unless it can be shown that the Wright brothers or other pioneers of flight had studied the boomerang.
More “diversity” nonsense.
No...I doubt Wilbur and Orville had even heard of boomerangs.
"Hold my beer!"
Amazing how a native Aboriginal tribe that don't count more than 3 ..( as in 1, 2, 3,...many) solved complex problems in fluid dynamics.
Exactly. Real pioneers like Sir George Cayley, Octave Chanute, Dr. Langley, and Otto Lilienthal studied bird wings, and extensively documented their studies. No mention of boomerangs.
(The Wrights, by the way, contributed almost nothing to the design of their successful first plane. Were it not for an accident with the launching catapult, Dr. Langley would be celebrated as the first to fly, as Glenn Curtiss subsequently proved, and the Wrights would be unknown also-rans.)
You forgot F. W. Lanchester.
He obtained the equations of flight and aerodynamic equations by watching the path of small gliders above a long kitchen table. Identifying flight...stall and recovery he obtained the equations from graphs of the flight path and fit the equations to the graph. I can post images from his notebooks and patents...all his materials reside in the Launchester Library of Coventry University UK.
Wast that in the Cretaceous Period?
Mea culpa.
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