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Sperm caught breaking Newton's third law of motion
- raffraffraff 3y agoSounds like the part of the montage at the beginning of a new superhero franchise. "Even as a sperm, Levitron was breaking the laws of Newtonian physics..."
- helsinkiandrew 3y agohttps://archive.ph/xXbmn https://archive.ph/xXbmn
- mock-possum 3y agoI was hoping for a more accessible explanation about how it’s possible to break the third law in the first place.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoI found this [1], which isn't more accessible, but does contain the following in the intro: "... Newton's third law may be violated if we regard it as a open system, with its mechanical energy being injected from microscopic active units." I get that not treating it as a closed system may enable breaking the symmetry of the law. But still no idea how it actually works! [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.07162 https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.07162
- drbig 3y agoI vaguely recall that the sperm cell's "tail" wasn't actually a "snake like whip", that would move like a... snake, but actually a 3D spiral that's much closer to Archimedes' screw in both shape and mechanism of propulsion... Was I imagining that? ... As when you look at very small stuff via a microscope you're essentially losing the third dimension and everything looks flat, so if it's also mostly translucent... you see a wiggly whip rather than a rotating spiral. But I have to say "non-reciprocal movement" has a nice ring to it.