
Spiders Use Earth's Electric Field to Fly Hundreds of Miles (2018) - brahmwg
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-electric-flight-of-spiders/564437/
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matt-snider
Here's a quite good (but simplified) explanatory video:

[https://youtu.be/Ja4oMFOoK50](https://youtu.be/Ja4oMFOoK50)

This one contains more real examples of them ballooning:

[https://youtu.be/VDL9VxLqdvw](https://youtu.be/VDL9VxLqdvw)

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yannis
There is a beautifully illustrated arxiv paper Ballooning Spiders: The Case
for Electrostatic Flight by Peter W. Gorham at
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4731](https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4731), which is a
good read, if you want to get a bit more into the subject.

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dang
Discussed last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17465068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17465068).

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qubitcoder
Original paper:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982218306936)

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carapace
FWIW, I saw a small (~1cm length x >1mm wide) caterpillar doing this once in
the woods. I thought it was dangling from a tree but then it just kept going.

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Jim-
More like a showerthought, but:

If arachnids are able to detect magnetic fields and react accordingly, are
humans also able to do the same?

Anecdotally, I've always had people commenting on how their mood is down when
it is storming outside, and that they feel a 'negative energy' that doesn't
motivate them to do anything. So I wonder if there is a relation?

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cwkoss
Veritasium has a possibly-relevant video on negative ions:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ--
scjcAZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ--scjcAZ4)

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Jim-
Wow, dude really goes all out to explain / prove it politely.

Thanks for the video. Never heard of Veritasium before, now one of my new
favorite youtubers

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blarg1
Maybe that explains all those times I've seen spiders seemingly floating in
mid air coming towards me.

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mhb
That or you're reading too much Hunter Thompson.

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tim333
There's a video version of the University of Bristol research story too
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRrUxi6d7so](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRrUxi6d7so)

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sylens
This article seems like a spoiler for Children of Time

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wildylion
Just don't tell Randy. ([https://xkcd.com/8/](https://xkcd.com/8/))

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brighter2morrow
>This idea—flight by electrostatic repulsion—was first proposed in the early
1800s, around the time of Darwin’s 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.

>First, they showed that spiders can detect electric fields. They put the
arachnids on vertical strips of cardboard in the center of a plastic box, and
then generated electric fields between the floor and ceiling of similar
strengths to what the spiders would experience outdoors. These fields ruffled
tiny sensory hairs on the spiders’ feet, known as trichobothria. “It’s like
when you rub a balloon and hold it up to your hairs,” Morley says.

>In response, the spiders performed a set of movements called tiptoeing—they
stood on the ends of their legs and stuck their abdomens in the air. “That
behavior is only ever seen before ballooning,” says Morley. Many of the
spiders actually managed to take off, despite being in closed boxes with no
airflow within them. And when Morley turned off the electric fields inside the
boxes, the ballooning spiders dropped.

One amazing thing to me is how this is the sort of experiment that an educated
layman could do in his garage without the need for millions of dollars in
funding and a research institute. Quaint and inspiring to aspiring citizen
scientists at the same time.

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pvaldes
I find the term "citizen scientist" really annoying. Either you are a
scientist or you aren't. If you do science you are a scientist. Point. No need
to add any other adjetive. Science should not act like a club with first class
and second class members.

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mellosouls
This has also now spread to the world of software development, in the context
of large management consultancies selling services to companies that want
software without those pesky expensive Devs.

Strangely enough, I have been unable to find their definition for Citizen
Management Consultants...

[https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/citizen-
developer/](https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/citizen-developer/)

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inflatableDodo
'Citizen Developer' sounds a bit like a corporate euphemism for a guard job at
a gulag for political dissidents.

