One study published in the magazine PRX Life indicates that sperm violate Newton’s third law — which ensures that every action has an opposite reaction of the same intensity.
The idea of the trio of researchers from Kyoto University, Japan, was to investigate the movement of microswimmers, such as sperm and algae. Chlamydomonasin a viscous fluid.
Both human male gametes and single-celled algae move via thin, elongated structures known as flagella.
What scientists discovered regarding the motility of the observed organisms is that the internal action in the elastic material is “non-reciprocal”, going against Newton’s third law.
The ability of flagella to move without losing energy through dissipation in the fluid, which would impact their movement, was described as “unique elasticity”.
“From simple solvable models to biological flagellar waveforms to Chlamydomonas and sperm, we studied the odd curvature modulus to decipher the non-local and non-reciprocal internal interactions within the material,” the study concludes.
According to the research, the discovery could be useful for characterizing differences between species and individual cells.
Source: CNN Brasil
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