- Venus flyus leaves close in response to physical friction, salt water, or thermal stimuli.
- A team of scientists from Berlin has seized the magnetic cost of trapping the plant.
- Sensitive, non-invasive atomic magnetometers picked up the accessible signal.
For many children, the revelation that there is such a thing as Venus Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, the amazing moments. Choppers are plant predators as if something out of a fairy tale has gone wrong. Adults can not only help but be fascinated by them too, and now scientists at Johannes Gutenberg Mainz University (JSU) and the Helmholtz Mainz Institute in Germany have discovered something new that is surprising about demons small ones: Every time they catch a prey, they release a measurable magnetic charge.
“We have been able to show that functional capabilities in a heterogeneous plant system produce measurable magnetic fields, something that has never been proven before,” says lead author Anne Fabricant.
Offense as cut magnetically
Plant hybrid knot trap (left), side view of deserving snare lobe (right)
Credit: Fabricant Reports, et al./Sientient
According to Fabricant, the discovery is not sin a lot of panic: “Wherever there is electrical activity, there should also be magnetic activity,” she tells Live Science. And it is an electrical activity in the form of an action ability that stimulates its maw – a pair of leaf lobes in fact – to close when a non-stop beast enters them, attracted by the nectar with which the plants feeding the trap.
On the inner surface of the lobes are trichomes, hair-like projections that cause the trap to close when disturbed by prey. One rub of trichome is very likely to close the trap – perhaps a way to help the plant expend energy on false alarms. A couple of rounds, though, and time is of the essence. The lobes come together as the brambles at their edges join together to help the prey. As the traps tighten the trapped insect, its own secretions like uric acid cause the trap to close even tighter, and then begin to digest.
Anyway, just because JSU researchers had reason to suspect that the plant would provide a magnetic charge, capturing it was no simple task.
Reading the magnetic result of Venus flytrap
Average action capabilities and corresponding magnetic signals
Credit: Fabricant Reports, et al./Sientient
“The problem,” says Fabricant, “is that the magnetic signals in plants are very weak, which explains why it was extremely difficult to measure them with the help of older technologies.” Still, where there is a will : “You could say the study is a bit like doing an MRI scan in humans.”
The trap is not only stimulated by trichome flicks – it will also close if stimulated by salt water, or by the use of hot or cold thermal energy. The researchers applied heat with a purpose-built Peltier device that did not emit any back-up magnetic noise to weave or overcome the weak magnetic signal that was they seek. For the same reason, the experiments were performed in a room with magnetic wings at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin.
The researchers used atomic magnetometers to measure the magnetic charges of the planets. The atomic magnetometer is a glass cell containing a lump of rubidium atoms. When the traps were excited, the magnetic charges released by the electron spins of the atoms changed.
The researchers constructed magnetic signals at sizes up to 0.5 picoteslas. “The magnitude of the recorded signals is similar to that seen at surface measurements of zero thrust in animals,” Fabricant said. It is more than a million times weaker than the Earth’s own magnetic field.
Biomagnetism
Other researchers have discovered magnetic charges come into burning animal nerves – including inside our own brains. The phenomenon is referred to as “biomagnetism.” Because other plants have the potential to act, they could generate biomagnetism, although they have not been less researched.
The JSU team’s attention is now turning to other plants, looking for even lower magnetic costs from other species. As well as providing a new understanding of nature’s use of electricity, non-invasive detection technologies such as the one employed by the organization could one day be used for a more insightful study of crops as they deal to thermal, pest and chemical effects.
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