Sand Dunes Can Communicate With One Another? This is Wild!

Amaze Lab

University of Cambridge researchers captured the movement of sand dunes with high-speed cameras and found they “communicate” by creating turbulence like the wake behind a boat.

Transcript

00:00This might sound crazy, but sand dunes can apparently communicate with each

00:08other. University of Cambridge researchers discovered that even though

00:11they're inanimate objects, sand dunes interact with and push away their

00:15neighboring dunes as they move. The team used an experimental dune racetrack or

00:20a circular water-filled flume allowing them to observe long-term dune behavior

00:25with high-speed cameras. They found that two identical dunes begin close

00:29together but got much further apart over time. The upstream dune made swirls on

00:34the downstream dune, pushing it away and changing the properties of the dune. They

00:39got further and further apart until they created an equilibrium 180 degrees apart.

00:44Dune migration can harm shipping channels, turn fertile land into desert, and bury

00:49infrastructure. So they want to find evidence of this dune migration in

00:53deserts to help prevent this. The findings were published in the journal

00:56physical review letters.

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