[HN Gopher] Bird with GPS flies into typhoon ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-26 23:00 UTC)