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The journal Nature (where the original article was published) has a video about that parachute:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rrDW6YIbXI



I had to wonder if Nature (the Mother, not the journal) had first created anything similar, because she always does.

One answer is a dandelion seed. Not exactly the same, but a dandelion seed is about 85%+ "porous" - the pores here being the space between the spindles, not actual holes per se. And it turns out that high porosity is critical to stabilizing the wake turbulence not unlike what is described in the Nature video. https://sites.nd.edu/biomechanics-in-the-wild/2021/06/01/inn...

A learning that kirigami parachute researches might apply: The dandelion pappus is less porous near the center and becomes more porous toward the outer edge. A lower porosity near the central hub can increase shear flow, helping to detach and strengthen the vortex

Furthermore, spiders which have been known to "balloon" on the wind even across entire oceans use multiple strands of silk which are negatively charged to repel each other, thus forming some of the same gaps that are seen in a dandelion pappus, with similar aerodynamic benefits. https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.105.0...


The fine article mentions this, including mentioning dandelion seeds specifically:

  > As well as kirigami, the team drew inspiration from nature. Instead of relying on a gliding angle, many wind-dispersed seeds are equipped with structures that stabilize the airflow around them: including the feathery bristles of dandelion seeds, which create a stabilized vortex in their wake.


Is that really Nature's channel? It sucks that I have to ask, but I just ran across that video (and channel) on the weekend. I have a new policy where I don't trust videos to not be AI slop when they don't have a real, on screen presenter. This one didn't, but it also didn't really feel like AI slop, but it could have been stolen content since that is very common nowadays because it goes unpunished.




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