Dandelion seeds create a bizarre whirlpool in the air to fly
Hairlike filaments help spawn the swirling vortex and create drag
When you’re essentially a little ball of floof, flying is hard.
To ride the wind, dandelion seeds stir up a weird type of whirlpool in the air directly above them. The newly discovered way of moving through the air, described October 17 in Nature, resolves a long-standing question about how the seeds stay aloft.
Dandelion seed flight is not unlike the flight of Mary Poppins: Utterly charming, yet inexplicable when it comes to physics — until now. When a gust of wind plucks a seed from the plant’s fuzzy head, a fluffy structure called the pappus keeps the seed aloft before it ultimately falls to the ground. The structure, which extends from the seed, is made up of tiny hairlike filaments, making it mostly empty space.