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60-SECOND SCIENCE, Honeybee Swarm Has as Much Electric Charge as a Thunderclod

Shayla Love: This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Shayla Love.

When you hear a bee buzzing along, visiting a flower, you're hearing the movement of air made by the fluttering of its wings. But it turns out that bees are buzzing in more than one way.

Giles Harrison: I first saw this when I saw a bumblebee land on an electrode I was using, and I saw a real change in the measurement. And I thought, “This is a charged thing.”

Love: That's Giles Harrison, a professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Reading in England. He's co-author of a recent paper in iScience that measured the electric charge of swarms of bees and found that the insects can generate as much electricity as storm clouds.

Ellard Hunting: We've known for quite a long time already that bees carried an electric charge.

Love: Ellard Hunting is a biologist at the University of Bristol in England, and he studies how different organisms use those electric fields in the environment. Plants and pollen tend to be negatively charged, and bees are positively charged.

Hunting: The bee visits a flower, and the pollen is actually electrostatically attracted to the bee, and so they stick better and they transfer better.

Love: There are several honeybee hives that are used for research at the field station at the University of Bristol's school of veterinary sciences. Those bees sometimes swarm, and that's when the researchers were able to directly measure them using an electric field monitor.

Bees can also electrically sense whether a flower has been visited by another bee who already took its nectar. But until now, it hadn't been considered that living things flying around in the atmosphere could make an impact with their own charges.

Now, an individual bee's charge is minuscule: it takes a lot of bees to generate enough electricity to make an impact.

Hunting: Imagine that you need a billion of those to light up an LED.

Harrison: Fifty million million bees to get enough charge to start a car.

Love: But altogether, because there are so many insects in the atmosphere, they can have a massive effect.

This means that bees and other large groups of insects are capable of changing the atmospheric electric fields around them—potentially impacting things such as weather events, cloud formation and dust dispersal.

Insects are not the only living thing that spends time in the atmosphere. Birds and microorganisms carry charge, too, and take up space in the lower atmosphere.

Even before the bees were measured, we knew the sky was filled with electricity. These static electric fields are found everywhere in Earth's atmosphere. And they can be swayed by rain, lighting, aerosols, pollution, volcanoes and possibly earthquakes.

Atmospheric electricity is measured as something called the vertical potential gradient, or PG, which is the difference in voltage between the surface of Earth and any point in the air. The team found the swarms of bees could change the PG by 100 to 1,000 volts per meter.

They also modeled how atmospheric electricity might be impacted by other insects, such as desert locusts, which can form swarms of up to 460 square miles. These swarms are dense enough to cram 40 million to 80 million of the insects into less than half a square mile. Based on past measurements of locusts' electric charges, such swarms create more charge than those reported for electrical storms.

Not all insects pack such an electrical punch. In the modeling, moths and butterflies don't seem to have a big impact because of their low densities.

Right now insects' electric charges aren't accounted for in climate models that look at complex interactions in the atmosphere. They probably should be: the combined electric charge of all these insects might impact the development of rain, snow, and droplet formation and maybe even how clouds are made.

Hunting: We can only speculate, but, like, that might have an impact on cloud formation. If there's a direct link between insects and cloud formation, then we know that clouds are relevant to climate.

Love: Insect electricity could also be influencing how dust moves around the atmosphere. This is something that atmospheric scientists are interested in because such dust cuts off incoming sunlight and can change temperature distributions locally.

Harrison: The link between dust and insects is very interesting because one of the questions in climate change is “How is it that large particles move from the Sahara?” And we just thought about it in terms of the physics of transporting them from the Sahara. What if they're stuck to a locust because they're charged? That really changes things, and we could think about it very differently.

Love: After learning about how much of a spark these insects can generate together, it may be time to start taking into account all that extra buzzing up in the air.

For 60-Second Science, this is Shayla Love.

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**Shayla Love:** This is __Scientific American__'s 60-Second Science. Shayla||||scientific||||Science Shayla Love|||||||| Shayla Love: This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. Shayla Love : C'est la science en 60 secondes de Scientific American. I'm Shayla Love.

When you hear a bee buzzing along, visiting a flower, you're hearing the movement of air made by the fluttering of its wings. |||||жужжание||посещая||||||||||||порхании||| |||||buzzing sound||||||||movement||||||rapid wing movement||| |||||||||||||||||||날개짓||| ||||arı|vızıldamak||||||||||||||kanat çırpışı||| |||||||||زهرة||||||||||||| |||||zumbido|a lo largo|||||||||||||aleteo||| But it turns out that bees are buzzing in more than one way. ||оказывается|выясняется||||||||| |||||arılar||||||| ||||||estão|||||| 하지만 결국 벌들이 한 가지 이상의 방식으로 윙윙거리고 있다는 것이 밝혀졌습니다.

**Giles Harrison:** I first saw this when I saw a bumblebee land on an electrode I was using, and I saw a real change in the measurement. ||||||||||шмель||||электрод||||||||||||измерение |||||||||||touch down|||electrode||||||||||||data reading ||||||||||||||||||||||||||medição Giles|Harrison|||||||||yaban arısı||||elektrot||||||||||||ölçüm değeri ||||||||||||||전극|||||||||||| ||||||||||бджола|||||||||||||||| ||||||||||abejorro|||||||||||||||| 자일스 해리슨: 나는 내가 사용하고 있던 전극 위에 꿀벌이 착륙하는 것을 봤을 때 처음 이 장면을 보았고, 측정에 실제로 변화가 생기는 것을 보았습니다. And I thought, “This is a charged thing.” ||||||заряженная| ||||||emotional| ||||||중대한| ||||||cargado| 그리고 나는 생각했습니다, “이것은 전하가 있는 것이다.”

**Love:** That's Giles Harrison, a professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Reading in England. |||||||대기(1)|||||||| |||||||atmospheric|physics||||||| |||||||atmosferik fizik|||||||| He's co-author of a recent paper in __iScience__ that measured the electric charge of swarms of bees and found that the insects can generate as much electricity as storm clouds. |||||||||||||||рои||пчел||||||||||||| |||||recent study|||iScience||measured||electrical|||groups of bees|||||||||produce|||electricity||thunderstorm clouds|clouds ||||||||||||elétrica|carga elétrica||||||descobriu que||||||||||| ||||||||||||||||von|||||||||||||| ||||||||iScience dergisinde||ölçtü|||||arı sürüleri|||||||böcekler||||||||fırtına bulutları |||||||||||||||світів||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||enjambres|||||||||||||||

**Ellard Hunting:** We've known for quite a long time already that bees carried an electric charge. Ellard Avcılık||||||||||||||| 엘라드 헌팅: 우리는 이미 꽤 오랜 시간 동안 벌들이 전기적인 하전을 가지고 있다는 것을 알고 있었습니다.

**Love:** Ellard Hunting is a biologist at the University of Bristol in England, and he studies how different organisms use those electric fields in the environment. |||||biologist|||||Bristol University||||||||organisms||||fields||| |||||biyolog|||||||||||||organizmalar||||||| 러브: 엘라드 헌팅은 영국 브리스틀 대학교의 생물학자로, 그는 다양한 유기체가 환경에서 이러한 전기장을 어떻게 사용하는지를 연구합니다. Plants and pollen tend to be negatively charged, and bees are positively charged. ||пыльца|||||||||| Plants||plant reproductive material||||negatively|charged||||positively| ||polen|eğilimindedir||||||||| ||пилок|||||||||| 식물과 꽃가루는 일반적으로 음전하를 띠고, 벌은 양전하를 띱니다.

**Hunting:** The bee visits a flower, and the pollen is actually electrostatically attracted to the bee, and so they stick better and they transfer better. |||||||||||정전기적으로||||||||||||| |||||||||||by electrostatic attraction|drawn to|||||||||||| |||||||||||elektrostatik olarak|||||||||||||

**Love:** There are several honeybee hives that are used for research at the field station at the University of Bristol's school of veterinary sciences. ||||||||||||||||||||||수의학| ||||honeybee|hives|||||||||||||||||veterinary sciences|veterinary sciences ||||bal arısı|arı kovanları||||||||||||||Bristol Üniversitesi'nin|||veterinerlik fakültesi| |||||вулики бджіл|||||||||||||||||| ||||abeja melífera|colmenas de abejas|||||||||||||||||| Those bees sometimes swarm, and that's when the researchers were able to directly measure them using an electric field monitor. |||cluster|||||||||in a direct manner|||||||monitor |||toplanmak||||||||||ölçmek|||||| |||роїтися|||||||||||||||| |||enjambre|||||||||||||||| 그 벌들은 때때로 떼를 지어 날아다니고, 그때 연구원들은 전기장 모니터를 사용하여 그들을 직접 측정할 수 있었습니다.

Bees can also electrically sense whether a flower has been visited by another bee who already took its nectar. |||by electric means|||||||||||||||nectar |||elektriksel olarak|||||||||||||||nektarını 벌은 또한 꽃에 다른 벌이 이미 네크타를 채취했는지를 전기적으로 감지할 수 있습니다. But until now, it hadn't been considered that living things flying around in the atmosphere could make an impact with their own charges. ||||||düşünülmüş|||||||||||||||| 하지만 지금까지는 대기 중에서 나는 생물들이 자신의 전하로 영향을 미칠 수 있다고는 고려되지 않았습니다.

Now, an individual bee's charge is minuscule: it takes a lot of bees to generate enough electricity to make an impact. ||||||крошечная|||||||||||||| ||||||very small|||||||||||||| |||arıların|||minik|||||||||||||| ||||||미세한|||||||||||||| ||||||мізерна|||||||||||||| 현재, 개별 벌의 전하량은 미미합니다: 영향을 미치기 위해서는 많은 벌들이 필요합니다.

**Hunting:** Imagine that you need a billion of those to light up an LED. |||||||||||up|| ||||||||||luz||| 사냥: LED를 켜기 위해 그런 벌들이 10억 마리 필요하다고 상상해 보세요.

**Harrison:** Fifty million million bees to get enough charge to start a car. ||||||get|||||| |cinquenta milhões||||||carga suficiente|||dar partida|| 해리슨: 자동차를 시작할 수 있는 충분한 전하를 얻기 위해서는 5000억 마리의 벌이 필요합니다.

**Love:** But altogether, because there are so many insects in the atmosphere, they__ __can have a massive effect. ||overall||||||||||||||| ||||||||böcekler||||||||| ||en conjunto|||||||||||||||

This means that bees and other large groups of insects are capable of changing the atmospheric electric fields around them—potentially impacting things such as weather events, cloud formation and dust dispersal. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||и|пылеобразование| |||||||||||||||atmospheric||||||||||||||||spread of particles ||||||||||||||||elétrica||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||분산 |||||||||||||||||||||etkilemek||||||||||dağılımı |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||дисперсія

Insects are not the only living thing that spends time in the atmosphere. Birds and microorganisms carry charge, too, and take up space in the lower atmosphere. ||미생물||||||||||| ||microorganisms||||||||||| ||mikroorganizmalar||||||||||| |||||||ocupan||||||

Even before the bees were measured, we knew the sky was filled with electricity. |||||ölçüldü|||||||| These static electric fields are found everywhere in Earth's atmosphere. |durağan|||||||| And they can be swayed by rain, lighting, aerosols, pollution, volcanoes and possibly earthquakes. ||||подвержены влиянию||||||||| ||||influenced||||||||| ||||etkilenebilirler||||aerosoller||volkanlar|||deprem olabilir ||||영향을 받다||||에어로졸||||| ||||схилені||||||||| ||||influenciados||||||||| 그들은 비, 번개, 에어로졸, 오염, 화산 그리고 아마 지진에 의해 영향을 받을 수 있습니다.

Atmospheric electricity is measured as something called the vertical potential gradient, or PG, which is the difference in voltage between the surface of Earth and any point in the air. ||||||||вертикальный|потенциал|градиент||||||||||||||||||| atmospheric|electricity|||||||||gradient||||||||||||||||||| atmosférica||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||dikey potansiyel gradyan||gradyan||||||||voltaj farkı||||||||||| ||||||||수직||기울기||||||||||||||||||| |||||algo llamado|||||||||||||||||||||||| 대기 전기는 수직 전위 구배(vertical potential gradient)라고 하는 것으로 측정되며, 이는 지구 표면과 공기 중의 임의의 지점 간의 전압 차이를 의미합니다. The team found the swarms of bees could change the PG by 100 to 1,000 volts per meter. ||||groups||||||||||| |||||||||||||volt||metre başına 연구팀은 벌 떼가 PG를 1미터당 100에서 1,000볼트까지 변화시킬 수 있다는 사실을 발견했습니다.

They also modeled how atmospheric electricity might be impacted by other insects, such as desert locusts, which can form swarms of up to 460 square miles. |||||||||||||||саранча||||||||| ||||atmospheric|||||||||||desert-dwelling insects||||swarms||||| |||||||||||||||çekirgeler||||||||| |||||||||||||||саранча||||||||| ||modelaron|||||||||||||langostas del desierto||||||||| These swarms are dense enough to cram 40 million to 80 million of the insects into less than half a square mile. ||||||밀어넣다||||||||||||| |||dense|||fit||||||||||||| |||||ile|sığdırmak||||||||||||| ||||||abarrotar||||||||||||| |||щільні|||||||||||||||| 이러한 떼는 40백만에서 80백만 마리의 곤충을 반 평방 마일도 안 되는 지역에 밀집시킬 만큼 밀도가 높습니다. Based on past measurements of locusts'  electric charges, such swarms create more charge than those reported for electrical storms. |||||locusts||||swarms||||||||| |||ölçümler||||||||||||||| 과거 메뚜기의 전하 측정을 기반으로 할 때, 이러한 떼는 전기 폭풍에 대해 보고된 것보다 더 많은 전하를 생성합니다.

Not all insects pack such an electrical punch. |||упаковывают||||удар электричества |||pack|||| |||||||elektriksel darbe |||упаковують|||| |||empaquetan||||golpe eléctrico 모든 곤충이 그러한 전기적 힘을 가진 것은 아닙니다. In the modeling, moths and butterflies don't seem to have a big impact because of their low densities. |||||||||||||||||плотности |||insects with wings|||||||||||||| |||güveler ve kelebekler||||||||||||||yoğunlukları düşük

Right now insects' electric charges aren't accounted for in climate models that look at complex interactions in the atmosphere. ||böceklerin elektrik yükleri|||||||iklim modelleri||||||etkileşimler||| ||||||tenidas en cuenta|||||||||||| They probably should be: the combined electric charge of all these insects might impact the development of rain, snow, and droplet formation and maybe even how clouds are made. ||||||||||||||||||||물방울|||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||small water particle|||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||damlacık oluşumu|||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||gota de agua||||||||

**Hunting:** We can only speculate, but, like, that might have an impact on cloud formation. ||||speculate|||||||||| ||||tahmin yürütebiliriz|||||||||| If there's a direct link between insects and cloud formation, then we know that clouds are relevant to climate. ||||||||||||||||ilgili|| ||||||||||||||||важливі для клімату|| If there's a direct link between insects and cloud formation, then we know that clouds are relevant to climate.

**Love:** Insect electricity could also be influencing how dust moves around the atmosphere. |||||||||hareket eder||| This is something that atmospheric scientists are interested in because such dust cuts off incoming sunlight and can change temperature distributions locally. ||||atmospheric|||||||||cuts off|||||||| ||||||||||||keser||||||||sıcaklık dağılımları|yerel olarak |||||||||||polvo atmosférico|bloquea|||||||||

**Harrison:** The link between dust and insects is very interesting because one of the questions in climate change is “How is it that large particles move from the Sahara?” And we just thought about it in terms of the physics of transporting them from the Sahara. ||||||||||||||||||||||||частицы||||||||||||||||||||| ||||toz||böcekler||||||||||||||||||||||Sahra Çölü'nden||||||||||||||||| 해리슨: 먼지와 곤충 사이의 연관성은 매우 흥미롭습니다. 기후 변화에 대한 질문 중 하나는 "사하라에서 큰 입자가 어떻게 이동하는가?"입니다. 우리는 단순히 사하라에서 그것들을 운반하는 물리학 관점에서 생각했습니다. What if they're stuck to a locust because they're charged? ||||||insect or grasshopper||| |||yapışmış durumda|||çekirgeye||| 그것이 만약 충전되어 있는 메뚜기에 붙어 있다면 어떻게 될까요? That really changes things, and we could think about it very differently. |||||||||||다르게 이것은 정말로 상황을 변화시키며, 우리는 그것을 매우 다르게 생각할 수 있습니다.

**Love:** After learning about how much of a spark these insects can generate together, it may be time to start taking into account all that extra buzzing up in the air. ||||||||искры|||||||||||начать|||учет|||||||| ||||||||spark||||||||||||||consider|||||||| ||||||||kıvılcım|||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||함께||||||||||||여분의||||| ||||||||chispa|||||||||||||||||||||| 사랑: 이 곤충들이 함께 얼마나 많은 스파크를 생성할 수 있는지를 알게 된 후, 이제 공중에서의 추가적인 윙윙거림을 고려해야 할 때일지도 모릅니다.

For 60-Second Science, this is Shayla Love. 60초 과학의 Shayla Love입니다.