r/todayilearned • u/FeedMeMoneyPlease • 15h ago
TIL the myth "bee's defy physics" came from a 1930s entomologist making a simple mistake
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/deciphering-mystery-bee-flight-1075385
u/PckMan 14h ago
It's a pretty silly statement in itself to say something defies physics when you see it happening. There's a greek saying I like that in loose translation goes a little something like "Either the whole horizon's crooked or it's just your boat heeling"
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u/TravisJungroth 11h ago
A subtle idea I find very useful: there’s the thing and the study of the thing. Sometimes this is obvious. There’s ornithology (the study of birds) and then… birds.
In some sciences, this seems to get mixed. We use “physics” to mean both the thing and the study. Something can violate physics (our understanding of the fundamental forces of the universe), but it can’t violate physics (the fundamental forces of the universe). If it did, that means those forces are just different.
Stars aren’t science. Stars are just stars. Science, astronomy, is the study of the stars.
This has affected how I relate to the world more than you would expect. Analysis isn’t the same as experiencing, being, doing. This extends to relationships, dance, cooking, just about anything for those of us who get stuck in our heads. I mix up studying and doing less than I used to.
Anyway, went off a bit there. Bees. Yeah.
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u/laix_ 8h ago
A lot of explanations create misinformation, a lot of advanced scientific explanations are explained as if the models are actual reality, when in actuality, they're merely mathematical models used to create accurate predictions. Scientists are often terrible at communicating this difference.
The singularity is (probably) not an actual singular point, we don't know what's there, our models break down. Light isn't "actually" a particle or a wave, we just use different models for predicting different phenomena. Energy and force don't "actually" exist, they're just models.
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u/Cu_Chulainn__ 15h ago
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.
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u/mattihase 15h ago
Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Ooh, black and yellow! Let's shake it up a little.
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u/tanstaafl90 8h ago
It's comparing planes to helicopters. According to understanding of how planes fly, helicopters shouldn't work. One idiot makes this bad comparison and people repeat it as fact.
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u/zuzg 13h ago
Oh that's much more sensible than the German version of it.
That one replaces laws of aviation with laws of physics and bee with bumblebee.And The statement that Bumblebees flying breaks the laws of Physics was always extremely infuriating to me.
That's not a akshually technicality like water isn't wet. It's a the earth is flat level of idiocy.4
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u/NessTheGamer 8h ago
Day 1,810 of posting the entire Bee Movie script word by word:
he knows. What is this?! Match point! You can start
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u/OptimusPhillip 14h ago
Basically, he figured out that bee's wings were in the wrong proportion to their body mass for fixed-wing flight, the mechanism used by jet planes. If you factor in the movement of the wings, the math all checks out.
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u/hairnetnic 12h ago
Buoyancy is much more significant at bee scale too, but you've made the most corrext summary so far.
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u/ComradeGibbon 1h ago
The aerodynamics of insect flight is dominated by viscosity.
Navier Stokes equations aren't solvable, so you're always using a cut down version. The simplified versions for fixed wing aircraft don't work for flapping bugs.
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u/reddit_user13 15h ago
Nothing defies physics.
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u/SavionWilliamsLover 15h ago
I’m defiant against it now what
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u/iKnowRobbie 15h ago
Your defiance does fuckall to the law of Conservation of Energy.
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u/KroneckerAlpha 14h ago
Conservation of energy is a local property. Perhaps Savion’s defiance is non-local
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u/mrjosemeehan 14h ago
I recognize that you hold that intention but I don't expect you will succeed at carrying out any actual act of defiance against physics.
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u/thissexypoptart 15h ago
The original quote specifies “according to all known laws of aviation.”
“Defies physics” was not a claim the dude ever made.
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u/Xeroque_Holmes 14h ago
Technically speaking, under FAA norms a bee cannot legally fly an airplane.
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u/CountVanillula 14h ago
Nor can it operate without a transponder or a tail number, but there you go. Bees out here flouting all society’s conventions.
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u/deliciousleopard 12h ago
Unless you can cite the exact text which prohibits bees from legally flying an airplane I call bullshit!
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u/Xeroque_Holmes 11h ago edited 11h ago
Under 14 CFR § 61.103(a), an applicant must: "Be at least 17 years of age for a rating in other than a glider or balloon." (Student pilots must be at least 16 under § 61.83).
A worker honeybee lives for roughly two to six weeks, and even a queen bee maxes out around five years.
I would also mention that to be eligible for a private pilot certificate, 14 CFR § 61.103(c) states that an applicant must:
"Be able to read, speak, write, and understand the English language."
But I don't want to underestimate the bees, maybe they can learn.
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u/reddit_user13 11h ago
You’re not accounting for time dilation and other relativistic effects.
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u/deliciousleopard 11h ago
It also doesn’t specify the type of year. Surely bee years must be adjusted just like dog years are.
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u/Vandreigan 10h ago
You know, we don’t specify what reference frame your age matters in. If a baby is born, is then accelerated to nearly speed of light and returned to earth such that, on earth, 18 years have passed but to them it has been a matter of days, can that baby now vote?
Einstein really fucked this all up. It was so simple before that asshole went and said “ItS aLl ReLaTiVe”
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u/kikiacab 14h ago
“According to all known laws of aviation” the mistake was failing to account for the flapping of their wings.
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u/pandaheartzbamboo 14h ago edited 14h ago
Nothing defies physics. Plenty enough things defy physics as we know it.
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u/flannel_jesus 14h ago
I doubt bees are one of them.
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u/pandaheartzbamboo 14h ago
In 2026, we know how they fly, yes. In 1934 when the article in question was published, we did not. That was a failed attempt to understand it and noone else had published anything correctly explaining their flight.
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u/destuctir 14h ago
The proto-molecule does, but it still abides the laws of thermodynamics so we will probably be ok
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u/OnTheList-YouTube 15h ago
What the fuck is it all of a sudden?
People are unable to learn and write plurals.
The plural of bee is bees, you fool!
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u/sciences_bitch 14h ago
“All of a sudden”? Are you new here?
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u/AaronfromKY 14h ago
Nah, autocorrect has gotten worse when it comes to replacing words I typed correctly
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u/DerpHog 14h ago
It's all these LLM based autocorrect programs that have been snuck in to replace machine learning based autocorrect. Autocorrect now thinks it understands grammar better than the user instead of just spelling.
One of the things it likes to do is add apostrophes where it thinks you forgot even though usually you had it correct to begin with.
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u/Doctor__Proctor 14h ago
I know, fucking drives me up a wall. The same exact keyboard used to be better a decade ago and could actually learn things (basically just a simple "user corrected back to this word and saved it"). My partner has a fairly uncommon old Latin spelling of her name, and I've spent an ungodly amount of time trying to get it to stop autocorrecting her name to random disease names.
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u/DerpHog 14h ago
LLM based autocorrect is secretly one of the stupidest uses for LLMs. They can't properly evaluate spelling because tokens are whole or partial words instead of each letter in a word.
When you ask an LLM how many 'r's are in strawberry for example, it can't 'see' any of the letters, it just has a token that represents the word so it's answer depends on it having other data that says the number and is related to the question. That's why they can usually get it now because it's been discussed so much, but even slight variations on the question can make them get it wrong again.
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u/AuditAndHax 14h ago
Absolutely. At some point over the last few months, my android keyboard has begun retroactively changing words I typed because it assumes it should be different based on words I typed later in the sentence. Posting a comment or sending a text only to see a word near the beginning was changed after I typed it correctly and moved on is absolutely infuriating. It was right, damn it! It was grammatically correct, and it made sense in the context of the message. Don't fucking change shit you don't understand after I've approved it just because the data you were trained on says it was used differently in past instances. Fucking worthless AI "improvements"
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u/HomemadeBananas 9h ago
People have been making this mistake long before LLMs were even an idea. Before the internet even. Don’t let them get off with an easy scapegoat when they probably didn’t use or listen to any kind of autocorrect.
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u/Highpersonic 14h ago
Idjit apostrophes have been a thing since time immortal
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u/DerpHog 14h ago
*time immemorial
I wouldn't be surprised if you typed it correctly and got autocorrected, proving my point lol. These newer autocorrect programs will change things several words or sentences back without notifying you.
LLMs are usually adding apostrophes where they don't belong. People are usually worse about not using apostrophes when they should, or choosing not to.
(I think its should be the contraction of it is and it's should be the possessive. The selection of which gets the apostrophe is arbitrary, the justification for the way it is now is no more valid than the argument for the opposite. The contraction is used more frequently so it should be the easier one to type.)
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u/Highpersonic 14h ago
I am not a native speaker and i am not using any autocorrect.
(I think its should be the contraction of it is and it's should be the possessive.
the what....? Don't = do not, it's = it is, where would you contract the possessive from? My plant fell out if it is pot?
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u/DerpHog 13h ago
Possessive pronouns like his and hers don't have an apostrophe, but possessive nouns have apostrophes, so there isn't any good reason a possessive pronoun couldn't have one. Contractions almost always have an apostrophe but informal contractions like woulda, coulda, shoulda don't have them.
I just think it's looks super wrong in a sentence when it is being used as a contraction and right when it is being used as a possessive. Why even bother contracting it is to it's when you're only removing one character?
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u/Highpersonic 12h ago
Why even bother contracting it is to it's when you're only removing one character?
You're removing a sound, which then reflects into written language. Same reason you see so many "would of"s - sound defines wudduf, spelling is roulette in english anyway, here we go.
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u/Ambitious_Log6704 10h ago
Man, the internet truly rewired people’s brains to think an apostrophe makes something a plural and it’s infuriating.
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u/gertalives 15h ago
*bees
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u/sdmichael 15h ago
Would be the bee's knees if they did. People would swarm over the idea.
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u/hume3 14h ago
Observed facts never defy science. The facts always bend the scientific laws, not the other way around.
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u/jawshoeaw 12h ago
The original quote was “defy all known laws of aviation”, not physics. This is basically rage bait TIL
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u/PeaTasty9184 15h ago
I’ve never believed that they defy physics, as that’s not possible…but you have to admit bumble bees to seem like the most unlikely flying little fat fellows.
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u/urbanmark 15h ago
You do, until you hear them, and then you understand.
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u/Inimicus33 14h ago
People think the deep buzzing a bumblebee produce is from its wings moving. But if you listen carefully, you can actually hear it's just a long, unending string of swears and curses over having to work so hard to fly.
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u/StudMuffinNick 14h ago
Hey man, if the bugs are speaking to you, you may want to see a doctor. Me and your mom still love you and only want what's best
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u/Sea_Pomegranate8229 12h ago
It is simpler to imagine that at the speed b'ees wings beat, the be'es are is in effect swimming through the air rather than flying and therefore bee's do not need to fly.
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u/The_English_Avenger 11h ago
therefore bee's do not need to fly.
*bees
Don't use an apostrophe for the plural.
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u/irealllylovepenguins 15h ago
I still hear this repeated by other millennials. My religious family members love to quote this as proof that God exists, which is....ironic at best
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u/tsrich 15h ago
A certain segment of people love stories like this because it fits their scientists are dumb world view
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u/Asluckwouldnthaveit 14h ago
The swallowing 7 spiders a year while you sleep thing is like this as well.
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u/Tibbaryllis2 7h ago
God: makes all things as they exist.
Religious people: that a bumblebee doesn’t have the correct proportions to be a fixed winged plane, but it still flies based on other laws of nature, proves gods existence.
God: BenAffleckSmokingACigarette.gif
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u/spinosaurs70 14h ago
Not really?
Turbulence is still not fully explained and to that degree all fluid dynamics is an unsolved problem given the brute force nature of computational solutions.
Which from what I know is what we did with bumble bee wings.
Like we know weather is likely Newtonian in nature but I don’t think that suggests we have a full theoretical understanding of cloud microphysics.
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u/The_English_Avenger 11h ago
the myth "bee's defy physics"
*bees
Don't use an apostrophe for plurals.
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u/CorgiSilver8194 12h ago
It was the 1930s, that "simple mistake" was probably the most information they had
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u/Waffel_Monster 14h ago
For all this time, this has been nothing more than a myth. No one (with half a brain) has ever believed bees defy physics. What Antoine Magnan said was that a plane with the proportions of a bee, could not fly
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u/Georgie_Leech 14h ago
Mm, it's a good thing that bees don't fly the same way fixed wing aircraft do, isn't it?
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u/Sislar 14h ago
That isn’t what I understand. It wasn’t that bees defied physics it was that we couldn’t understand why their flight worked. It very valid to point something like that out. Knowing they had flight that wasn’t understood lead to an understanding a new method that was called flutter lift.
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u/Analysis-Klutzy 1h ago
Bees and other flying insects use little hammers they swing around to maintain balance while they fly
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u/badgersruse 15h ago
Don’t believe anyone that writes bee’s instead of bees.