Dandelion seeds fly using 'impossible' method never before seen in nature
Dandelion seeds fly using a method that researchers thought couldn't work in the real world, according to a study published on 17 October in Nature.
When some animals, aeroplanes or seeds fly, rings of circulating air called vortices form in contact with their wings or wing-like surfaces. These vortices can help to maintain the forces that lift the animal, machine or seed into the air.
Researchers thought that an unattached vortex would be too unstable to persist in nature. Yet the light, puffy seeds of dandelions use vortices that materialize just above their surfaces and lift the seed into the air.
Also at the University of Edinburgh and BBC.
A separated vortex ring underlies the flight of the dandelion (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0604-2) (DX)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Friday October 19 2018, @02:03AM (2 children)
Hey,
-- meta question for the folks behind the site --
What are the odds we could have a warning/error about unclosed tags when hitting submit?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:55AM (1 child)
And this quote markup is not the biggest such problem around here, the real problem is strike, underline, italics and bold which end up modifying all subsequent comments in the thread. Looks pretty spectacular when it happens. :)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @12:06PM
Sorry to reply to myself but here's a taste of things gone funky: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=27151&page=1&cid=723072#723072 [soylentnews.org]