Did you know that some snakes can fly – or at least glide down from a tree under control? I had a vague idea that this was possible but I had no idea how the snakes did it, so I really enjoyed the video below from Mashable. Jake Socha at Virginia Tech explains how these normal looking snakes transform their body shapes when they launch themselves from trees, allowing the snakes to glide elegantly to the ground.

Yes, flying snakes are real. Here's how they do it pic.twitter.com/sTFAaUkmGg

— Mashable (@mashable) July 15, 2022

Staying on the topic of things flowing through the air, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have used fluid mechanics to study the movement of aerosols generated by professional brass and wind musicians. In 2020, Paulo Arratia and Douglas Jerolmack were asked by the Philadelphia Orchestra to help them find a stage configuration that would minimize the spread of COVID-19 among musicians and the audience.

The dilemma was that the sound and co-ordination of the orchestra suffers if the musicians are separated by large distances, but if they are brought closer together and separated by clear barriers the musicians struggle to hear each other.

The researchers worked with musicians who played flutes, tubas, clarinets, trumpets, oboes, bassoons, and other wind and brass instruments.

Misty music

To see and track the aerosols flowing out of the instruments, the researchers placed a humidifier at the bell of the instruments to create a mist. They were then able to tract the particulates by shining light on the mist and observing it with a high-speed camera.

They found that the instruments produced similar-sized particles as those exhaled during normal breathing and speech. They also discovered that the particle flows out of most instruments dissipated into the ambient air flows after travelling about 2 m – which is on par with spacing recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can read more about the study in Physics of Fluids.

Famous for his flowing locks and searing solos, the Queen guitarist Brian May also holds a PhD in astrophysics and is keen on promoting astronomy to the public. Now, he has teamed up with fellow rocker Graham Gouldman of 10CC fame to release a new song called “Floating in Heaven” that celebrates the first images acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope. You can watch the video above.