Researchers are making small claws out of dead spiders, dandelion seeds are inspiring scientists to mimic their distribution with small sensors to be able to better track ecological information, and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is helping us create a 3D map of the universe.
Researchers are making small claws out of dead spiders, dandelion seeds are inspiring scientists to mimic their distribution with small sensors to be able to better track ecological information, and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is helping us create a 3D map of the universe.
Undead Spiders
Dandelion Drones
Dark Energy Made Light
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/undead-spiders-dandelion-drones-dark-energy-made-light
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about researchers who are making small claws out of dead spiders, new tiny sensors that spread like dandelion seeds, and a device helping us create a 3D map of the universe!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, I know you’ve always been fascinated by spiders, so you’re going to love this story. Scientists at Rice University in Houston, Texas may have found a way to bring spiders back from the dead, sort of… they were able to manipulate dead spiders’ muscles, and doing so could prove quite useful, for a whole lot of purposes.
NATE: Back from the dead?? This is really some Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, zombie kind of stuff! How on earth would they do this?
CALLI: One day, Professor Daniel Preston and grad student Faye Yap were moving some equipment around the lab and noticed a dead spider. If you’ve ever seen a dead spider, when they’re not totally squished, you know that when they die all eight of their legs curl inward. But as good researchers, seeing this made Yap and Preston curious, how exactly did a spider’s legs work? What was the mechanism that made them fold in like that?
NATE: I guess I’ve never wondered about spider…muscles?...Do they have push and pull muscles like our biceps and triceps?
CALLI: Spiders have a totally different mechanism to move their legs! They only have flexor muscles, and these muscles can only move their legs inward. To move their legs outward, they rely on hydraulic pressure from fluids within their bodies! But when a spider dies, they lose that outward pressure, and the muscles that move the legs inward have no opposing force, so all the legs curl inward, kind of like how a claw for an arcade claw game curls in. This got the research team curious: could they use that curl reflex?
NATE: Use it? Like using that curling inward to actually grip stuff?
CALLI: Exactly. So Preston and Yap started working on ways to manipulate the legs. They took a hypodermic needle and inserted it into the spider's body, sealing it with glue. They then used a syringe attached to the needle to pump small amounts of air into the body. When they did this, the pressure caused the legs to uncurl, release the pressure, and they’d curl right back up. As they describe it, “Open. Close. Open. Close. No special lab equipment needed.” Being able to manipulate the dead spiders’ muscles could prove quite useful, for a whole lot of purposes.
NATE: Oh that's so cool, kind of like mechanical-claw-zombies. So what kind of things are they thinking about using them for?
CALLI: There are actually a few potential uses, especially since the dead wolf spiders that the team used were capable of grabbing objects up to 130% of their own weight. These spiders have potential for something called “microscale manipulation,” which is basically picking up tiny electronic components. But this manipulation could also be used in the field so that researchers can more delicately handle fragile samples, like small living insects.
NATE: Since these are living things, or were at one point, does this make them a more environmentally friendly option?
CALLI: Yes yes! The spiders are naturally biodegradable, and researchers were able to use them as grippers 1,000 times before they started to show wear due to dehydration. The researchers hypothesized that they could extend the durability of the spider grippers by applying a special coating that they are still developing.
NATE: Oh wow, that really is incredible. What’s next for the project? Am I going to see these picking up Tic Tacs at an arcade near me soon?
CALLI: Professor Preston says he hopes to continue the research to learn more about spider’s movements, as he wants to try to make a dead spider crawl.
NATE: OO that is so cool, a bit creepy I’ll admit, but so cool.
CALLI: Well I hope we get to see it some day soon!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, I’ve got a cool story today about researchers working to mimic dandelions.
CALLI: Hopefully not allergies as bio-weapons.
NATE: No, but it does have to do with their floating seeds! Researchers are trying to mimic the same natural process that dandelions use to spread their seeds to create tiny wireless sensor-carrying devices that float in the wind like seeds to collect precise information across large areas.
CALLI: Tiny floating electronics? How do you go about making those?
NATE: A team at the University of Washington built teeny tiny little sensor carrying devices that can float about the length of a football field and collect environmental information, and that's while they weigh 30 times more than a normal one milligram seed.
CALLI: What kind of sensor do they carry?
NATE: Each can hold up to four sensors and collect information like temperature, humidity levels, wind patterns, air pressure, and other info. Researchers hope to release about a thousand of them at once and allow the wind to spread them across an area!
CALLI: That’s a huge network of info. But don’t we already have plenty of devices that can collect that info?
NATE: We do. But it can be kind of tricky to monitor all these factors as they change over large land masses like forests and farms. Releasing thousands of these devices would allow for both more precise measurements, and measurements across a larger area.
CALLI: So how are we using these? Have we seen real world benefits?
NATE: The data collected could help us better track pollution in the air and even the movement of airborne particles responsible for spreading diseases. But, the designs do still have a few problems.
CALLI: I’d think so. It must be a ton of work to engineer so many sensors on such a small package.
NATE: Surely. The first issue is battery power. Solar power is a great solution, but of course, that means the devices can’t work at night. The team tried to remedy this by having it store some power, but they were only able to get enough to help it power up the next morning when the sun came up, rather than running all night long. There’s still some troubleshooting that needs to be done for them to work around the clock.
CALLI: Okay, but even if they can get them powered, do they just leave them littered about the forest after they’re done doing a study?
NATE: Clean up is a big hassle. They’re so small that retrieving a thousand of them at a time is a real headache, even if they can be tracked. So the team has started exploring ways to make them biodegradable.
CALLI: But in between floating around and decomposing, how do researchers retrieve the data, if they’re not retrieving the actual devices?
NATE: Through backscatter! It's actually a really simple method for data collection. Researchers transmit a signal, and the devices transmit their data wirelessly by reflecting that signal back. It’s allowing a whole new way for us to study the large-scale land and air environments. And future improvements may include making the devices steerable. This means they could survey a large area, and then go investigate and explore an area that seems important. There are so many cool applications for them!
CALLI: I just love how we are using biomechanics to design more efficient technology.
NATE: Me too, sometimes to save the world, you have to get a bit of inspiration from it.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, I know we’ve both been stoked to see images from the James Webb Telescope, but there is another new instrument helping us see deep into space. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, is helping us study previously unknown galaxies and illuminate the origins of mysterious dark energy in our universe
NATE: Dark energy? I always hear about it, but it's such a strange thing to try to understand.
CALLI: You’re not alone! The world’s scientists are still trying to figure it out too. We know that about 70% of the universe is dark energy, and yet it remains supremely difficult to study. As the universe expands, we know that the presence of dark energy increases. Whatever the future of the universe is, it's in dark energy’s hands.
NATE: So if we know so little about dark energy, how does this instrument help us study it?
CALLI: Well to understand how DESI is helping us understand dark energy, we first have to talk about light. I promise we will get back to the dark stuff soon! DESI collects light from deep in the universe with 5,000 optical fibers installed on the Nicholas U. Mayall, a 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. Each is adjusted by its own individual robot that is precise within 10 microns, less than a human hair. This sensitivity helps us capture light from distant galaxies, and break it down into its spectrum of colors. This system is more sensitive to light than our other instruments, and it is particularly great at picking up fainter and redder images.
NATE: Well what makes red light so important? We have that on our spectrum here on earth too.
CALLI: Right. The interesting thing is that as light travels through space from distant galaxies, it’s stretched over the course of billions of years towards the red or infrared side of the spectrum. The farther it travels, the redder it becomes.
NATE: Ah so we might be able to figure out which of two similar looking light sources is actually farther away based on how red it is?
CALLI: Right on. It's giving depth to what can sometimes look like flat space. This will help us build a more accurate 3D model of the universe. Researchers will use DESI to create images from more than a third of the sky and the millions of galaxies within it. The sensitivity will allow us to differentiate things like the light of small stars being born from the glow of dust superheating as it enters a blackhole! And It’s helping us find galaxies that are super far away. DESI is working on a 5 year plan and is only about 10% done with its work. We expect by the end of this plan, it will create a sort of 3D map of about 35 million galaxies
NATE: Ok, ok, that is awesome, and a staggering number, but can we circle back to the dark energy? How is all this light helping us see the dark!
CALLI: Well like I said before, we know that as the universe expands the presence of dark energy increases. By creating a more accurate map of the universe, we can better understand how it expanded, and how dark energy increased in this expansion. It’s giving us a kind of glimpse into dark energy’s past playbook, so we can try to figure out what it will do next!
NATE: Fascinating. That will wildly open the door for cosmology and astrophysics.
CALLI: Without a doubt, and it may finally help us answer the questions, what exactly is dark energy, and what is it doing as it accumulates in the universe? DESI is helping us understand not just where we are, but what we are.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Researchers successfully reanimated the legs of dead spiders by injecting them with small amounts of air. The ability to open and close a spider’s legs could soon prove useful for delicate tasks.
CALLI: Researchers have developed new sensor-carrying devices that move with the wind like a dandelion seed. These tiny devices can collect data like pressure, temperature, humidity, and even possibly airborne pathogens precisely across large areas.
NATE: The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, is helping us study dark energy, black holes, and the formation of our universe. The instrument, the most sensitive to light we have ever created, is illuminating galaxies that have long been hidden from sight, and enabling us to create an accurate 3D map of the cosmos.