In the rough sea, a storm was coming, and a white spot appeared in the distance. It was closer, it was closer, it turned out to be a ship sailing.
People can't help but worry: When a storm comes, the ship will be in danger because it doesn't know the weather. In fact, people's worries are unnecessary. On the front deck of the ship, a jellyfish ear storm predictor is designed to ensure the safety of the ship when it encounters a storm. People can't help but admire: Scientists are really smart. In fact, this clever trick was not thought up by scientists, but was inspired by jellyfish.
Jellyfish, also called jellyfish, is an ancient coelenterate that floated in the ocean as early as 500 million years ago. This lower animal has the instinct to predict storms. Whenever a storm approaches, it swims to the sea for refuge. How can jellyfish have such powerful abilities?
It turns out that in the blue ocean, the infrasound waves (frequency 8 to 13 Hz) generated by the friction between air and waves are a warning before the storm is coming. This kind of infrasound wave cannot be heard by human ears, but it is easy for jellyfish. After research, scientists found that jellyfish ears have a thin handle with a small ball on the handle and a small listening stone inside the ball. When the infrasound waves before the storm hit the hearing stones in the jellyfish's ears, the hearing stones stimulated the nerve receptors on the walls of the balls, so the jellyfish heard the rumble of the approaching storm.
In this way, biomimetic scientists imitated the structure and function of jellyfish ears and designed the jellyfish ear storm predictor, which quite accurately simulates the jellyfish's organ that senses infrasound waves. This instrument is installed on the front deck of the ship. When it receives the infrasound waves of the storm, it can cause the horn that rotates 360° to stop rotating on its own. The direction it points is the direction of the storm; the reading on the indicator is Can tell you the intensity of the storm. This kind of predictor can predict storms 15 hours in advance, which is of great significance to the safety of navigation and fisheries.