Ants Use Soil Physics To Excavate Meter-Long Tunnels That Last Decades (newscientist.com) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist, written by Matthew Sparkes: Ant colonies can descend several meters underground, house millions of insects and last for decades, despite being made without the benefit of machinery and reinforcing material. The secrets of these impressive architectural structures are being revealed by three-dimensional X-ray imaging and computer simulations, and could be used to develop robotic mining machines. Jose Andrade at the California Institute of Technology and his colleagues set up miniature ant colonies in a container holding 500 milliliters of soil and 15 western harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex occidentalis). The position of every ant and every grain of soil was then captured by high-resolution X-ray scans every 10 minutes for 20 hours. The X-ray results gave researchers exact details about the shape of each tunnel and which grains were being removed to create it. The team then created a computer model using those scans to understand the forces acting upon the tunnels. The size, shape and orientation of every grain was recreated in the model and the direction and size of force on each grain could be calculated, including gravity, friction and cohesion caused by humidity. The model was accurate to the 0.07 millimeter resolution of the scanner.
The results suggest that forces within the soil tend to wrap around the tunnel axis as ants excavate, forming what the team call "arches" in the soil that have a greater diameter than the tunnel itself. This reduces the load acting on the soil particles within the arches, where the ants are constructing their tunnel. As a result, the ants can easily remove these particles to extend the tunnel without causing cave-ins. The arches also make the tunnel stronger and more durable. "We had naively thought that ants perhaps were playing Jenga, that they were tapping, maybe they were wiggling grains, maybe they were even grabbing the grains of least resistance," says Andrade. He says it is now clear that the ants appear to know nothing about forces and show no signs of decision-making, but instead follow a very simple behavioral algorithm that has evolved over time.
The ants tend to dig relatively straight tunnels that descend at the angle of repose -- the slope at which a granular material naturally forms mounds -- which was around 40 degrees in this case. They also pick exactly the right grains to remove to create a protective arch above. "In a remarkable way -- in a rather, you know, serendipitous way -- they've stumbled upon a technique for digging that is in line with the laws of physics, but incredibly efficient," says Andrade. The team believes that if the behavioral algorithm can be further analyzed and ultimately replicated, then it may find application in automated mining robots, either here on Earth or on other planetary bodies where the already risky business of mining would be even more dangerous for humans. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The results suggest that forces within the soil tend to wrap around the tunnel axis as ants excavate, forming what the team call "arches" in the soil that have a greater diameter than the tunnel itself. This reduces the load acting on the soil particles within the arches, where the ants are constructing their tunnel. As a result, the ants can easily remove these particles to extend the tunnel without causing cave-ins. The arches also make the tunnel stronger and more durable. "We had naively thought that ants perhaps were playing Jenga, that they were tapping, maybe they were wiggling grains, maybe they were even grabbing the grains of least resistance," says Andrade. He says it is now clear that the ants appear to know nothing about forces and show no signs of decision-making, but instead follow a very simple behavioral algorithm that has evolved over time.
The ants tend to dig relatively straight tunnels that descend at the angle of repose -- the slope at which a granular material naturally forms mounds -- which was around 40 degrees in this case. They also pick exactly the right grains to remove to create a protective arch above. "In a remarkable way -- in a rather, you know, serendipitous way -- they've stumbled upon a technique for digging that is in line with the laws of physics, but incredibly efficient," says Andrade. The team believes that if the behavioral algorithm can be further analyzed and ultimately replicated, then it may find application in automated mining robots, either here on Earth or on other planetary bodies where the already risky business of mining would be even more dangerous for humans. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Oh we can defeat any group of people we want. However, we are at a point where we are unwilling to use any means necessary.
However most of the worlds society frowns on Nuking an area until it glows, or carpet bombing an area where cities and towns are gone.
Basically all the countries of the world are now mostly in restraint when they go into war. It is not about getting the most kills, or getting rid of country. But a complex set of objectives and some hope that the other guy will just realized how wrong
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Almost a billion? Maybe you aren't from the U.S and that's what your country spent. According to the estimates I read it works out to around $300 million per day or around $2 trillion. And that doesn't count what the Russians spent before us. idiocy.
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Global politics frowns at wars of conquest(remember how everyone grumbled at Russia for Crimea?)
Where exactly the war is being fought does not matter much, so long as the right amounts of money are being spent in the right districts to ensure the incumbents will get reelected for 'protecting jobs'
The media only cares in so far as they can praise political allies or condemn political enemies, so most civilians are not even aware of how many wars are currently being fought. Any wars with an inconvenient slan
Hail Ants! (Score:2)
Hail Ants!
Excellent news! (Score:5, Funny)
If the Ant-Man movies taught me anything, it is that mechanical strength is scale-invariant, so we can use the same tricks as ants to build not only tunnels that are a few millimeters across but also tunnels three orders of magnitude larger!
Specifically, because we live in three dimensions (Score:4, Insightful)
It can be useful and interesting to think about WHY that is.
Why is it easy to design and build a palm-sized quadcopter, but nearly impossible to build one more than about two meters or so across?
It's because weight is the cube of scale. Suppose you make something "ten times bigger". That means means ten times longer, ten times wider, and ten times thicker. A thousand times as heavy.
If we lived in a two-dimensional world, things would scale much better.
That's just cool (Score:3, Funny)
That's just cool research. And in related research, they can now study cancer in insects!
Psudoscience ? (Score:2)
I'm just wondering... Romans knew how to build arches like a 1000 years ago. As did the vikings, and presumably also a lot of other cultures too. It's not really NEW information that you can angle rocks to hold up under pressure. Humans have been doing it for millennia too.
However, one thing that was also learned by the romans, was that these types of structures dont hold up very well under uniform stress levels. Like 1000 soldiers marching in cadence easily breaks a bridge. Or in modern times, cars and tra
Re:Psudoscience ? (Score:4, Insightful)
learned by the romans, ... Like 1000 soldiers marching in cadence easily breaks a bridge.
Really? Citation? I've only heard that claim for suspension bridges in the 19th C. Romans did not have suspension bridges.
Or in modern times, cars and trains stressing the exact same place over and over again.
Are you trying to reference metal fatigue? Engineering 101. Steel, conveniently has a fatigue limit.
If we are to actually learn anything from the ants, wouldn't it then be to build, or design our use of structures to prevent stress damage ?
Err, no. I don't see how. We already know the maths. It's nice that you are thinking about engineering, but you don't seem to have read anything about it.
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Google "aquaducts". They were not made in steel. Google at the Colliseum, not made in steel. Please do Your own homework, thanx. Noone mentioned a suspension bridge, except for You. Ants only build those in movies, no citation needed, You can just buy an antfarm and check for yourself.
That You dont seem to want to look at alternatives, seems to suggest that You are the one without any grasp on science... Science is about innovation, discovery, and expanding knowledge, not about sticking with what You know.
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Soldiers do what they are told, and are not paid to think. Yes, it is an old military tradition (legend) which may possibly have some basis in fact.
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This article was about automation of tunnel building. Fun fact number 1, we need to colonize Mars in this century. Fun fact number 2, Those colonists will not be living on the surface. If we can drop robots to pre-dig tunnels based on this algorithm vs say a remote operator or some half-assed AI? That would be a monumental leap forward in the colonization effort. That brings the price from cost prohibitive to let's get some government funding.
Re: Psudoscience ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fun Fact #3 If people are using up this planet to the point they need to colonize Mars, then it's time for nature to get rid of humans.
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Agreed. But that still suggests that You are looking for a NEW engineering principle, which they clearly state they have not found. Ants use arches. That's not a new engineering principle. I can build that today. My toddler can build an igloo in the snow from the same principle.
That still doesn't mean that the construction will stand up to how we humans end up USING it. The Igloo will melt when the sun comes. The ant tunnel will collapse when there is a tremor in the ground. Highways degrade and get pothole
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That fact number 1 is not a fact, it's an assertion. There's a difference. And how fervently you believe it is not relevant to whether it's a fact.
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No colonization of Mars will happen this century. Rather obviously. No matter how bad climate change gets, Earth will still be massively better than Mars for survival.
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Then call it settleing if you want to differentiate it from mass colonization :P
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No permanent settlement on Mars will happen this century either. The technology and knowledge for survival on mars are just not there. It is even quite possible that humans on Mars will not happen this century. The journey is deadly due to cosmic radiation.
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There is not much difference between a submarine and a dome on mars.
I'm pretty sure we have a settlement there in 20 years.
There is no "special technology" needed, it is not an SF universe. It a simple thing actually.
The journey is deadly due to cosmic radiation.
Only there is some, that actually hits you: which is really really unlikely.
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There are extreme and fundamental difference between submarines and a dome on Mars.
If you cannot see the glaringly obvious, then yes, you would believe such nonsense.
Also cosmic radiation hits you as soon as you are out far enough space. Seriously.
Re:Psudoscience ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not about arches, it's about how ants decide which material is safe to extract, theories were they tapped at the grains of soil to see where it was already loose/not under stress, or test pulled on various to remove the easiest, or applies some other mental analysis. The knowledge gained is none of that applies. You can mindlessly remove material in that size and use 40 slopes without understanding.
The collapse of suspension bridges due to resonance is not uniform stress damage. It is an amplification of waves in the material compounded by external forces (wind, marching in step). Such doesn't occur in the same way in arch structures, or the "ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah" song would be entirely different.
Roman arch structures were typically overbuilt due to lack of understanding of stresses and modern engineering principles and material science. In modern times, we've been able to outperform them to produce larger, taller, more extreme, thinner, and more cost effective. Instead of spending ten times the labor/material/cost we design tighter to the needs. There's little value in taxing to build a Roman style bridge in an earthquake area.
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Agreed. Knowledge have progressed a lot in the last few thousand years.
That is kind of my point too. We already know how to do what the ants do, and we already know that this is hardly enough for our needs.
So there isn't a lot of decent science in it.
The same thing can be said of the arches. As I remember it from history classes, the British Stationary Office sometime during the middle of the last century, concluded that studies of the pressures and directions of force in arches remains purely "empirical in
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If you want to avoid stress, you should not follow ants but soap bubbles. Bubbles will automatically find the most energy efficient positions. Replicate that in your buildings and you are done.
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Th scientific goal here was not to determine how to make arches. It was to determine how ants do it. And it was found that they have no clue what they are doing and that means the method may be accessible to AI.
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I'm just wondering... Romans knew how to build arches like a 1000 years ago. As did the vikings, and presumably also a lot of other cultures too. It's not really NEW information that you can angle rocks to hold up under pressure. Humans have been doing it for millennia too
What's definitely not new information is the part about "arches" naturally forming in the soil so that the walls of the tunnel don't need to hold back the full pressure. That's well known to engineers and pretty intuitively obvious. At least in the summary, there just aren't many surprises here.
Boring company (Score:1)
Correct me, but do not all creatures use physics? (Score:2)
I am pretty sure that bees use physics to fly, worms use physics to dig, fish use physics to swim, geckos use physics to stick to things, etc. etc. etc.
What makes humans different is that we UNDERSTAND the physics, and can teach it using mathematics rather than just demonstrating it.
Not so remarkable (Score:2, Insightful)
"In a remarkable way -- in a rather, you know, serendipitous way -- they've stumbled upon a technique for digging that is in line with the laws of physics..."
The ants who didn't dig this way Darwined themselves.
Future Irony (Score:1)
not how evolution works (Score:4, Insightful)
"they've stumbled upon" these rules.
No, they haven't "stumbled upon" anything.
Out of 100 colonies, they all had different strategies. A few of them picked the right size grains. The others likely DIED for their poor choices.
Then the ones that lived had babies. The babies that continued that behavior lived. The others died,
And so on.
(shrug) that's how evolution works,
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Awesome article (Score:2)
Love these articles... nature doing engineering and other marvels all by itself. It never stops being amazing how insects "figure" things out... seemingly impossibly complex things.
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It's like billions of years of natural selection played no part whatsoever... One day, australopithecus was just wandering along, minding his own business. The next day? Mozart! How in the heck did that happen?
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Their processes may be more broad, and their model of the world more blurry, in fact very much so for ants, but that's about it for differences in thinking. Otherwise it works the same. Humans also only "figure" things out by neural input for two things with a lot in common flowing across the same neurons, so we "recognize a pattern", and the flow before and after goes through neural paths that the past experiences shaped, allowing us to predict things based on what happened in correlation in past events.
Th
When I was a boy... (Score:1)
He gave me one about 200mm diameter and 100mm deep, with lots of levels and rooms and little ant-y inclusions. I thought it was so cool!!
It was a lot like this [youtube.com] example.
Harvester ants. Ouch. (Score:2)
Posting to undo erroneous mod (Score:2)
Posting to undo erroneous mod
The tinkering away of science (Score:2)
Can we extrapolate safely? (Score:2)
Great...
So now we know how ants bombarded by X-rays tunnel. I'm not sure what that tells us in general.
This is similar to how we know a lot about the psychology of college sophomores due to them willingly subjecting themselves to experiments in exchange for credits in Psychology 101. However this doesn't tell us much about the psychology of 70 year olds or those with low IQ or prisoners.
And won't somebody think of the ants -- what did the bombardment with X-rays do to their life prospects and dreams.