[HN Gopher] Bird with GPS flies into typhoon
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Bird with GPS flies into typhoon
Author : clumsysmurf
Score : 126 points
Date : 2023-10-26 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| KingLancelot wrote:
| That's awesome, it's like Zelda fast travel from wind waker IRL
| lol.
| jrflowers wrote:
| This could be the future of transportation
| trillic wrote:
| Call me when Silicon Valley reinvents sailing
| jrflowers wrote:
| Amazon could fly hundreds of their more commonly sold items
| into a typhoon and distribute them over long distances while
| using very little energy
| agilob wrote:
| Maybe we could also solve some problem of garbage dumps?
| Build all the garbage dumps on a route of frequent cyclones
| and the trash just disappears the next Tuesday!
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't _want_ a cyclone every Tuesday. Not even to get
| rid of the trash.
| FredPret wrote:
| Progress doesn't wait for anyone!
| jrflowers wrote:
| The cyclone supply will be fixed and unresponsive to
| demand
| jrflowers wrote:
| We could build ramps near common cyclone routes in order
| to launch the trash into space at escape velocity or at
| the very least into low earth orbit
| _jal wrote:
| ...And it probably have odds of reaching the intended
| recipient similar to their "leave packages on urban
| sidewalks" program.
| foota wrote:
| Um, theyre putting (nontraditional) sails on cargo ships now,
| does that count?
| CE02 wrote:
| I was about to mention this...
| mrcode007 wrote:
| The original cargo ships looked like this:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5
| /Ko...
| foota wrote:
| There are apparently also green shipping company using
| newly built "actual" sailboats.
|
| We live in strange times.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| We're calling it... Sailr, the revolutionary green sea travel
| technology, it uses the power of our app to capture the wind
| to drive a turbine to generate electricity that charges your
| phone which you can then plug into our cybertwirl that
| propels your boat. Only $14,99 per month, in the App Store
| and Play Store.
| klyrs wrote:
| Like OceanGate but for tornadoes. Love it
| lainga wrote:
| I wonder if you (the bird) get hypoxia or altitude sickness and
| experience the whole thing as a sort of gliding blur
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I guess they always have the choice of turning around and
| increasing the pressure hitting their beak?
|
| What's the temperature like up there though? I guess it's
| different during this kind of storm than usual?
|
| Internet says temperature drop 2C per 1000'
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > Internet says temperature drop 2C per 1000'
|
| The Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate: one of only two things I
| retained from a Meteorology class decades ago :-)
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| And the other fantastically unforgettable fact?
| lainga wrote:
| The saturated adiabatic lapse rate! When they meet it's
| happy land^W^W the cloud base
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| There are 27 species of clouds. My favorite will always
| be cirrus spissatus cumulonimbogenitus (google helped me
| remember how to spell it!).
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Bird lungs work very differently from mammals. They have air
| sacs in front of and behind the lungs that take up a
| significant portion of their body cavity. The lungs themselves
| don't expand or compress. Air moves unidirectionally through
| the lungs both during inhalation and exhalation so there is no
| time at which the lungs themselves are not operating optimally.
| It is a two-phase system... during inhalation the posterior air
| sac fills with fresh air as spent air accumulates in the
| anterior air sac. The effective blood gas exchange surface area
| is about double that of mammals as well.
|
| Basically: bird lungs are "pipelined" and highly optimized to
| extract oxygen even at altitude.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| A reminder of just how far back in genetic history birds and
| mammals went separate ways. Another being that birds have no
| X or Y chromosomes -- their genetic machinery for sex is very
| different from ours.
| quercusa wrote:
| > _All the while, the bird was zipping along at 90-170 km /h
| (56-106 mph). Given that these birds generally cruise at 10-60
| km/h (6-37 mph), at his top speed_
|
| I assume the higher speed is "across the ground" but it's
| possible he flew his usual airspeed the whole time.
| mongol wrote:
| Yeah. I imagine it is like a ballon that blows away with the
| wind. To it, there is no wind. Just the ground is moving away
| below it.
| natoliniak wrote:
| but wouldn't the wind exert some pressure on the back of the
| bird? wouldn't it not generate any lift otherwise and just
| drop back to the ground? like sails on a sailboat, for the
| sailors it feels like there is no wind, but the sails are
| carrying massive pressure
| mongol wrote:
| The comparison with the balloon is perhaps not entirely
| accurate since birds like you say, fly using lift from the
| wings. So they need to have some relative speed vs the air.
| lxgr wrote:
| The point is that as long as the entire body of air the
| bird is flying through is moving uniformly and without
| acceleration, it's perceptually indistinguishable from
| calm air (except visually, and even that only when flying
| pretty low).
|
| For rotating and turbulent air, which would both not be
| totally unheard of in a hurricane, this probably doesn't
| apply though.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| This is probably like when you swim out at the beach, and
| back and find you are 20m away from where you started due
| to currents. But you didn't feel it.
|
| With dead reckoning you could probably figure out.
| lxgr wrote:
| You can't feel linear/unaccelerated motion, and
| biological organisms aren't great at indirectly deriving
| it from acceleration and rotation over time the way
| inertial navigation systems do.
| HPsquared wrote:
| A sailboat uses the speed difference between the water
| (basically stationary) and the wind. A bird (or sailplane)
| just moves along with the wind. Birds and sailplanes can
| however hang around areas of rising air to overcome their
| natural sink rate.
| _moof wrote:
| When you're flying, wind is no longer the air moving over
| the ground, it's the ground moving under the air. It
| doesn't produce acceleration except for a brief moment when
| you leave the ground.
| stouset wrote:
| If you're in a boat in a river, your "natural" speed is the
| speed of the river. Same with air.
|
| You point about a sailboat and wind is confused; the
| pressure comes from the fact that the boat is traveling at
| one speed through the water and at a _different_ speed
| through the air.
| natoliniak wrote:
| ok, if the bird's natural speed is that of the ambient
| air, then how does it stay up? the bird is not lighter
| than air, so where does the upwards pressure on the bird
| come from? either the bird must flap its wings to stay up
| or there must be speed difference between the bird and
| the ambient air to generate lift.
| tw04 wrote:
| If the bird's natural speed is 7mph, and the tail wind is
| 7mph, the bird is still flying at 7mph airspeed, its
| ground speed just increases to 14mph.
|
| No different than a jet flying with or against the jet
| stream.
|
| https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern
| /ai...
| dcroley wrote:
| Like in Dune, once you are in the storm, you have to go with the
| flow to survive.
| dpflan wrote:
| Indeed, like any physical or metaphorical system of forces...
| dylan604 wrote:
| unless you're a salmon
| kunwon1 wrote:
| Happened to me, in a canoe on a large lake. I had a lot of
| experience on small lakes, but large lakes also have large
| waves. Hadn't planned on that. It was either 'go with the
| waves' or go under
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Tsk. Should have listened to more Gordon Lightfoot :-)
| lucb1e wrote:
| Based on the map, showing data both before and after the circular
| typhoon-caught pattern, I take it the bird survived? That's... I
| hope they didn't get hurt at all, but that sounds rather epic
| from the bird's perspective in retrospect!
| Gare wrote:
| > Happily, the bird survived and eventually returned to his
| feathered friends with quite the story to tell.
|
| From the article
| esaym wrote:
| > Regardless, looking at this wild ride highlights the increasing
| risks that seabird populations could face as climate change
| drives more extreme weather events.
|
| Is this hurricane really an outcome of "climate change"?
| o11c wrote:
| The _existence_ of hurricanes isn 't, but the frequency and
| severity very much are.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| Maybe not, but there might simply be more hurricanes due to
| climate change?
| myko wrote:
| The increase in hurricanes is, yes. To claim specific hurricane
| is a direct result of climate change is probably not meaningful
| - they're all related to climate, and climate change is causing
| more to occur.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| That's a nice 1000km free ride
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Fast travel unlocked
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/40553/20221018/flying-...
|
| Seems the ones who live on the Japanese islands do this as
| standard practice.
|
| Like their bigger cousins they use dynamic soaring. A technique
| for harvesting energy from the wind by up and down oscillations
| to cover distance rather expending muscle energy flapping their
| wings.
|
| Afaik they can also lock their wings into glide mode with tendons
| without causing muscle fatigue to maintain flight for days on
| end.
|
| Also using unihemispheric slow wave sleep aids in that as well.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| > the bird resumed normal transmission and no doubt had some
| explaining to do when he returned to his flock over the water
| near the nesting island.
|
| as a dad joke appreciator, i love whoever wrote this
| nomel wrote:
| Incredible that it never lost its bearings.
| bsder wrote:
| To me, that is _WAY_ more impressive (so is the 4700m
| altitude!). The bird got completely tossed around for hours
| in extremely high winds and then still navigated back to it
| 's breeding ground.
|
| That's some _amazing_ navigation skill.
| busyant wrote:
| > The bird got completely tossed around for hours in
| extremely high winds and then still navigated back to it's
| breeding ground.
|
| And I got lost on one of the simplest hiking trails in a
| neighboring town last week. I tried to go off-path to
| circumvent a fallen tree. After about 15 minutes of
| thinking that I was just steps from reaching my
| destination, I ended up back at my starting point! I'm
| ashamed.
| helaoban wrote:
| How do we get a livecam on one of these things.
| constantly wrote:
| Somewhat related:
|
| https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/altius-drone-flies-hurricane-ian/
| vocram wrote:
| Curious how it managed to find its way back home.
| glalonde wrote:
| it had a gps
| eszed wrote:
| Very, very small sample size. This might be more common behavior
| than we realize.
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(page generated 2023-10-26 23:00 UTC)