Laser-Guided Sea Monkeys -- Causing Ocean Currents? - VIDEO

[tomm2thumbs]

Could the humble brine shrimp, a few millimeters in length, be partly responsible for the large-scale motion of the ocean?

That’s the finding from a pair of Caltech researchers, who used lasers to herd brine shrimp around a tank and track their effects on the water’s movement. The results, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, show that ocean currents may be a function not only of large-scale physical phenomena like wind and tides, but also of living things.

Video descript: A vertical migration of newly hatched A. salina (a species of brine shrimp, commonly known as Sea-Monkeys) is triggered by means of a blue luminescent signal. Animals were introduced at the top right corner of the tank resulting in a large concentration of organisms within that region at the beginning of the video.

After the blue laser beam was triggered, the organisms located the brightest spot at the bottom of the container, where the blue beam reflected off the surface. Thus, collective motion was induced toward that spot. Once the organisms reached that position, the light source was identified above, triggering vertical motion to the top. A red laser sheet at the center of the tank illustrates the lack of attraction to this particular light signal. Playback is four times faster than real time.

(Credit: M. M. Wilhelmus and J. O. Dabiri/Caltech)

Full article here:
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-sea-monkeys-laser-guided-brine-shrimp-20140930-story.html

[tomm2thumbs]

1. Water's version of 'the butterfly effect' perhaps

But even termites can down a house, so no doubt small brine can leave their mark as well.