LONDON: It’s a shame that humans remove themselves from nature because so many of the solutions to our problems can be found in nature if we just look hard enough. Scientists reconfirmed this lesson recently when studying the Cabbage White butterfly. It turns out that this often overlooked insect held a secret that could revolutionize how humans generate solar power, reports The Telegraph.
All butterflies rely on the sun for flight. Since it’s necessary for them to first warm up their flight muscles, they do something known as “reflectance basking” to gather in solar energy. What makes the Cabbage White butterfly unique is that it tends to be the first species flying in the morning even on cloudy days.
Scientists realized that the Cabbage Whites must have some adaptation that allows them to warm their muscles faster. They then theorized it had something to do with the special way they positioned their wings while basking. By keeping their wings 17 degrees from the horizon, they were optimizing their exposure to the sun.
With that knowledge in mind, solar scientists decided to let the butterfly’s stance influence their own experiments. Although they weren’t sure it would make any difference, they laid out solar panels in the same shape as the Cabbage White’s wings: in a V pattern with each panel tilted 17 degrees from the horizon.
Indeed, there is logic to this natural positioning. The researchers quickly learned that solar panels arranged in this new way collect more power than those arranged in other manners. The amount was not insignificant either – from this butterfly-inspired stance, many of these panels generated as much as 50 percent more solar energy than they had previously.
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