A Moment of Science
We click 'Save' constantly, but what's actually going on when we do?
Around New Guinea, there's a watery hill almost two hundred and fifty feet high. This isn't a hill on the ocean floor, but a hill on the ocean's surface.
On a previous show we discussed how, every 250,000 years or so, the north and south poles switch places. Not that the places themselves move, rather, the entire magnetic field of the earth flips around, resulting in the pole we now call north being on the southern tip of the planet, and vice versa. Why does this happen? Learn more on this Moment of Science.
This process is called osmosis; it dilutes the sugar-water inside the cells. But all the water coming in raises the pressure inside the cells so that eventually, the cell walls burst.
The hope is that as the fly walks across the surface, its little body charges up, allowing poisonous spores to stick to its body like metal shavings to a magnet. If this happens, then soon enough, the fly will walk no more.
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