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> Holderied says it could be possible to make materials ‘10 times more efficient at absorbing sounds than what we are using in our homes and offices’. Think sound-absorbing wallpaper, not panels, he adds. I would love to have something like that. All these open floor plan offices and open concept homes are loud AF.
Would be nice to understand how natural selection lead to this material and what were the steps. First you had a moth with some fur that absorbed maybe 0.1% ultrasound and then it started to increase from there generation and generation?
Would be nice to understand how natural selection lead to this material and what were the steps. First you had a moth with some fur that absorbed maybe 0.1% ultrasound and then it started to increase from there generation and generation?
In any given population there is natural variation: fastest moth, hairiest moth, whitest moth, etc. After evolutionary pressure is applied, the other moths are preferentially devoured, and the hairiest moth becomes the dominant variation with the most offspring.
For a similar historic account, read about the black form of the peppered moth which rapidly took over the moth population, caused by evolutionary pressure + single mutation in the year 1819.
The Hawk moth has evolved to emit ultrasonic clicks that jam the bat sonar: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/moths-avoid-capture-... Just more examples of the power of evolution.
Would be nice to understand how natural selection lead to this material and what were the steps. First you had a moth with some fur that absorbed maybe 0.1% ultrasound and then it started to increase from there generation and generation?
That could increase the odds that they'd eventually stumble upon things like this anti-sonar texturing, and that more advanced versions of it would start to appear. Maybe it could also have a role in the infamous peppered moth/pollution story.
And by contrast, maybe nature would also select for extreme resiliency of critical genes, like ones related to heart function and efficiency of resource use, so that they'd be less sensitive to generational variation.
I'm sure this could all still be explained even without that, but it's interesting to think about.
Would be nice to understand how natural selection lead to this material and what were the steps. First you had a moth with some fur that absorbed maybe 0.1% ultrasound and then it started to increase from there generation and generation?
Well the ones that didn’t do this got eaten by bats, it’s very easy to see how survival of the fittest works CB in this case. Designing an eye with evolution seems somewhat harder...
Would be nice to understand how natural selection lead to this material and what were the steps. First you had a moth with some fur that absorbed maybe 0.1% ultrasound and then it started to increase from there generation and generation?
Well the ones that didn’t do this got eaten by bats, it’s very easy to see how survival of the fittest works CB in this case. Designing an eye with evolution seems somewhat harder...
[0] https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/11/17/2014531117