fireflies

As It Happens6:32The mating dance of sea fireflies is ‘the coolest fireworks show that you've ever seen’: scientistNicholai Hensley has spent countless hours standing waist-deep in pitch-black waters off the coast of Panama, watching thousands of tiny sea creatures perform dazzling displays of bright blue light.The creatures — each the size of a sesame seed — belong to a recently discovered species of ostracod, also known as sea fireflies, whose males lure potential mates with a synchronized dance powered by iridescent…

The Philippines 40th National Book Awards ceremony took place last weekend, co-presented by the Philippines National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle. The Graphic Novel and Comics English and Filipino category winners were Jay Ignacio and Alex Niño’s Alandal and RH Quilantang’s Ang Mga Alitaptap ng Pulang Buhangin  (both published by Komiket, Inc.).  Award winners were declared around May 1, with the formal award ceremony taking place May 13 where winners could accept their awards and give their…

A similar scenario played out in the 1990s, when a Tennessee naturalist named Lynn Faust read the confident published assertion of a scientist named Jon Copeland that there were no synchronous fireflies in North America. Faust knew then that what she had been watching for decades in the nearby woods was something remarkable.Faust invited Copeland and Moiseff, his collaborator, to see a species in the Great Smoky Mountains called Photinus carolinus. Clouds of the male fireflies fill forests and clearings, floating at about…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Stake out in Pennsylvania's Cook State Forest at the right time of year and you can see one of nature's great light shows: swarms of fireflies that synchronize their flashes like strings of Christmas lights in the dark. A new study by Pitt mathematicians shows that math borrowed from neuroscience can…

A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 377, Issue 6609.Download PDF In the 18th century, the French naturalist Godeheu de Riville was sailing across the Indian Ocean when he came upon a remarkable sight. The sea “was covered over with small stars; every wave which broke about us dispersed a most vivid light, in complexion like that of a silver tissue electrified in the dark,” he recounted in his journal. When de Riville examined the sparkling…

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, inspired by fireflies, created insect-sized robots that emit light when they fly. Fireflies are known for their luminescence which they use for communication purposes. The MIT researchers who created these tiny robots intended something similar.The ability of these tiny robots to emit light can enable them to communicate with each other. It also makes tracking the robots more precise and efficient. While large robots can communicate using myriad tools,…

Engineers at MIT have added a new ability to existing flying robots – they can now glow when they flap their wings. Inspired by fireflies, this fluorescence could help with communication or tracking of the tiny, lightweight robots.The new work builds on the team’s previous developments with ultra-light flying robots that are fairly durable for their scale. The key ingredient of earlier work was a soft actuator, which consists of a thin cylinder made of alternating layers of elastomer and carbon nanotubes. When a voltage…