Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Every spring there is an invasion of spiders that sail through the air across the lake from Michigan to hunt bugs in the prairies of Illinois. Many of them rest (voluntarily or involuntarily) on the skyscraper windows.
https://milliontrees.me/2014/05/26/krakatoa-a-case-study-of-...
Like the incredible strength of the surface tension of water ... if you're a small insect.
Things could get pretty weird when we have small enough drones that they can take advantage of the physics of tinyness.
If interested, Michael Crichton wrote a cautionary story called “Prey”, based on the idea of nanobots and swarm intelligence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(novel)
Ballooning spiders operate within this planetary electric field."
Nothing but open blue skies above me, and a large spider flew in and landed right next to my hands/laptop. Suffice to say I didn't hang around long enough to take note of the species... That was enough fresh air for the day!
People in 2020 were a huge disappointment
edit: regarding making some form of AI seems you need understanding like "if electric field, deploy web, fly" sort of thing. inference?
So this is actually possible?
Wait, what !?
Reference: Chalmers, J. Alan, Atmospheric Electricity, Pergamon Press, London (1957).
9–1 The electric potential gradient of the atmosphere
On an ordinary day over flat desert country, or over the sea, as one goes upward from the surface of the ground the electric potential increases by about 100 volts per meter. Thus there is a vertical electric field E of 100 volts/m in the air.
I have never seen a ~100v per vertical metre potential difference in any cables or equipment that I've run. That includes a long SWA cable from a buildings' floor level to the roof-top end point (roughly 40 metres - so that would equal 40x 100v = 4kV).
[Edit to add - Longest vertical cable run I have dealt with was 180m / 41 floors for a four-core fire rated comms cable]
[Double Edit, Sorry.] The only source I was able to find was this "Or, if we suspend a metal object outdoors, we’ll find that it spontaneously charges up to a certain voltage: about +100VDC for every meter of altitude above the ground." from https://www.quora.com/Can-electric-current-charge-flow-throu...?
Global atmospheric electric circuit; atmospheric electric field (or potential gradient); Carnegie curve; electric field mill sensor.
> those numbers
It varies a lot. Time of day, location, conditions. Perhaps usually more than -100 V/m, and less than 200 V/m or so?
Nothing compared to the 10 kV of zapping doorknobs in winter.
> never seen [in...] buildings'
The e-field contours follow the outside of a building, rather than cutting through it. And of a person. And more inconveniently, sometimes of a sensor pole.
It's long seemed to me a pity this isn't used more in intro physics E&M. Been known for one or two+ centuries. Maybe with drone-sized less-expensive e-field sensors it will get more visibility?
Currently (00-ish UTC), the last 12-ish hours there, have been between 100 and 150 V/m. Preceded by 6-ish hours of high-variability, say -50 to 100 with excursions down by -200 V/m. And then 6-ish hours of 50 to 100 V/m. Aside from the 6 hrs of variability, which look like a front coming in, the shape seems stereotypical Carnegie curve.
[1] http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/weatherdata/Reading_daily_AWS_g...
Which was exactly the thought I had when I first learned this a few years ago.