The hidden scientific secrets of butterflies and how they are inspiring cutting-edge technical innovations.
Watch entire program here. The entire written transcript is also available on that website.
Here are some of the fascinating innovations I learned about. Most of the text is culled from the transcript.
SILK
The use of butterfly and moth features dates back at least 5,000 years, when the species known as Bombyx mori was first domesticated, in China, for its ability to produce a phenomenally resilient and versatile material: silk.
Today, a whole new chapter is opening in the story of silk. Researchers at the Tufts Silklab, in Boston, have isolated one of the proteins, called fibroin, and have created an innovative material.
Exploring medical applications: Fibroin has an advantage over synthetic materials, like plastics, because it’s compatible with the human body.
In the lab, they are finding that the fibroin material can be made to be rigid and tough or flexible, making it an ideal material as an implant in reconstructive surgery.
You can mechanically shape it with the tools that you commonly use in the mechanic’s shop. Then, what you can do is generate small screws.
The screws made of fibroin are similar to the metal screws currently used to reconstruct bones. They can also deliver human growth factor compounds to help bones knit together.
BLUE MORPHO ZIG ZAG
In flight, its wings seem to give off blue flashes that are hard to miss, even in the densest forest.
It’s an impressive adaptation to the problem of finding a mate in the forest, but it comes with a problem. What is so visible to the female butterfly is also noticeable to hungry birds.
The male has to find a way to parry this, that is, being very visible, while not getting caught by the first predator that comes along. The genius of this butterfly, like many others, is that it does not fly straight.
As it flits through the forest, blinking blue, it follows an unpredictable, zig-zag path, making it hard to track.
So, you have a dotted-line zig-zagging, like that, which makes it almost impossible for a bird to calculate its trajectory and snap it up in flight.
SOLAR POWER
The structures that produce the color of the Blue Morpho are visible under the microscope. The wings show a regular pattern of raised surfaces, each one just one-ten-millionth of a meter, in size. It’s the size of these structures that produce the wing’s iridescence.
This insight into structural color has inspired researchers to control light and produce color, without chemicals or paint, in all sorts of other materials.
These discoveries have the potential to revolutionize solar power. The scientists found that applying these nanostructures to a solar panel improved its efficiency by 130 percent.
The nanostructure allows the panel to absorb almost the entire light spectrum, minimizing loss of energy due to reflection.
GLASSWING AND SOLAR POWER
The surfaces of the Glasswing butterflies’ wings have scarcely any reflectivity. Even glass and other human-made materials reflect some light, but not this butterfly wing, which makes it extremely interesting to scientists.
For solar cells, it would be interesting to have less reflection and have more collection of the solar energy.
These researchers create a plastic film on which they print nanostructures, in imitation of those in the crystalline-type wing. Their goal is to create anti-reflective materials that are highly transparent.
In another segment, we learn that by combining the properties of the glasswing and cabbage white wings, researchers are hoping to develop a new generation of solar panels.
WATERPROOF
The nanostructures of the butterfly wings offer other properties, such as the ability to repel water, known as “hydrophobicity.”
Staying dry is a matter of life and death for butterflies. Mist and rain would quickly ground them if they weren’t waterproof.
A butterfly must not get wet. If the wings were wet and they touched each other, they would stick together, and the butterfly would die. So, a butterfly wing is super-hydrophobic, that is the wing doesn’t get wet. Water forms beads and then the bead rolls off, cleaning the wing of all of the dust and dirt it picks up along the way.
A scientist is hoping to create the same water-repelling effect. When he drops water on the surface he has created, it is totally repelled.
Fabricating a ship’s hull using this design would have an obvious benefit, but Chunlei believes it could also help us adapt to climate change. And, as our ocean levels continue to go up in the future, a lot of cities will have to be built on top of the ocean. And if we can deploy this in simple metal for the construction of the floating city, then the city will never sink.
GLASSWING AND GLAUCOMA
Today, an implant could provide easy access and constant monitoring for a patient at risk. But of course, anything inside the eye needs to be transparent, especially an artificial implant. And thus, because glasswings have no reflection, it inspires the scientists to create a new solution.
Rebeccas Butterfly Reflections 