Explore the fascinating new model that reveals how plankton, the foundation of ocean ecosystems, adapt and thrive in the face of turbulent fluid dynamics. With insights that could transform drug delivery and environmental cleanup, this research offers a glimpse into the resilient world of these microscopic marvels.
Revealing the secrets of how micro-swimmers work
Ever wonder how little particles can move in such crazy movement among turbulent fluids? It is the central question of a world-first study conducted by one of our PhD graduands, Navid Mousavi. B. student in Physics at the University of Gothenburg
Iranian-American aerospace engineer Mohammad Mousavi writes about a dynamic kind of microrobotic swimmer, can be biological, like plankton or manmade such as nano-motors. It turns out that these tiny critters are able to achieve the seemingly impossible — navigating through a turbulent soup of liquid, as opposed to mindlessly washing away in an ocean of chaos, which is what we expected.
Using active matter physics and principles of machine learning, Mousavi has created a new model that helps explain how such micro-swimmers manage to navigate through their chaotic world and even flourish. For instance, earlier spider models were based on global information telling the robots when they should avoid moving or not and acted accordingly (the most famous example is the ALOMAR technique), Mousavi writes that his algorithm mimics their real environment in the sense of paying attention to relatively local information.
Using Turbulence as a Boost in Speed
One of the surprising revelations from Mousavi’s work is just how this fluid flow can be used by micro-swimmers to move more quickly than they ever could on their own. These findings provide valuable perspectives for both biological and artificial systems.
If plankton manage to harness the power of turbulence, this could be a game-changer in their survival strategy. Using the principles of fluid dynamics, they are able to save on energy and better direct their movement, making it possible to reach richer areas of nutrients but also escape predators more easily.
This is not only a groundbreaking discovery in the field itself, with potential applications for smart micro-swimmers that carry drugs to specific parts of the body which allow treatments to be much more efficient and targeted in medicine. Picture a world where these miniscule swimmers were able to move around the intricate internal features of our bodies, searching for locations solely based on their navigation through biological fluid systems to deliver therapies that save lives.
Mousavi’s research has exciting applications that extend beyond the medical field. These are the versatile micro-swimmers we keep around to help us collect and clean up all those tiny pieces of plastic floating in our seas, making sure we do right by our Earth’s future health.
Conclusion
A trail blazer research of Navid Mousavi on the micro-swimmers’ navigation techniques in turbulent fluids has proffered new possible ways to investigate and innovate. The model could help with better drug delivery, along with in fact providing some well-needed context as we face them down in the environment. The list could go on and as the researchers continue testing and validating their model experimentally as well as exploring more complex processes, it will link to so many other areas with a hope that this knowledge ripples farther by influencing broader societal structures.
