"I was shocked when I pointed a UV light toward the worm blobs and they dispersed so explosively," Tuazon said. Tuazon, a co-first author of the study, collected videos of his experiments with the worms, including macro videos of the worms’ collective dispersal mechanism and microscopic videos of one, two, three, and several worms to capture their movements. “Also, these are not just typical filaments like string, ethernet cables, or spaghetti - these are living, active tangles that are out of equilibrium, which adds a fascinating layer to the question.” “We wanted to understand the exact mechanics behind how the worms change their movement dynamics to achieve tangling and ultrafast untangling,” Bhamla said. The study also highlights how cross-disciplinary collaboration can answer some of the most perplexing questions in disparate fields.įascinated by the science of ultrafast movement and collective behavior, Bhamla and Harry Tuazon, a graduate student in Bhamla’s lab, have studied California blackworms for years, observing how they use collective movement to form blobs and then disperse. Their research, published in Science, could influence the design of fiber-like, shapeshifting robotics that self-assemble and move in ways that are fast and reversible. To investigate, Bhamla and a team of researchers at Georgia Tech linked up with mathematicians at MIT. Saad Bhamla, assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech, wanted to understand precisely how the blackworms execute their tangling and untangling movements. But, most striking of all, while the worms tangle over a period of several minutes, they can untangle in mere milliseconds, escaping at the first sign of a threat from a predator. Tiny California blackworms intricately tangle themselves by the thousands to form ball-shaped blobs that allow them to execute a wide range of biological functions. But there are organisms that are better at tying knots and far superior - and faster - at untangling them. For millennia, humans have used knots for all kinds of reasons - to tie rope, braid hair, or weave fabrics.
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