#remote sensing

"Human touch is typically understood as a proximal sense, limited to what we physically touch.

However, recent findings in animal sensory systems have challenged this view.

Certain shorebirds, such as sandpipers and plovers, use a form of remote touch to detect prey hidden beneath the sand.

Remote touch allows the detection of objects buried under granular materials through subtle mechanical cues transmitted through the medium, when a moving pressure is applied nearby.

In the new research, Dr. Elisabetta Versace from Queen Mary University of London and her colleagues investigated whether humans share a similar capability.

The participants moved their fingers gently through sand to locate a hidden cube before physically touching it.

Remarkably, the results revealed a comparable ability to that seen in shorebirds, despite humans lacking the specialized beak structures that enable this sense in birds.

By modeling the physical aspects of the phenomenon, the researchers found that human hands are remarkably sensitive, detecting the presence of buried objects by perceiving minute displacements in the sand surrounding them.

This sensitivity approaches the theoretical physical threshold of what can be detected from mechanical ‘reflections’ in granular material, when there is a sand movement that is ‘reflected’ on a stable surface (the hidden object)."

"“It’s the first time that remote touch has been studied in humans and it changes our conception of the perceptual world (what is called the ‘receptive field’) in living beings, including humans,” Dr. Versace said."

(The findings were presented in September at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) in Prague, Czech Republic.)

good morning!! I‘m reading reading reading, but I’ve already learned a lot during my first 2 weeks of the internship!

The pitch, length and loudness of musical notes were created by transforming a variety of Aeolus’ data types into musical parameters, mapped onto the ranges of different wind instruments.

You can also hear landmark events, such as volcanic eruptions, represented by drums, hurricanes represented by wind sound effects, and the Covid pandemic represented by a pulsing synth.

Aeolus captured data from space 2018-2023, and it helped improve weather forecasts, especially during the pandemic, as a lot of commercial flights that would usually measure data on wind vectors didn't happen during that time period.

Each instrument in the orchestral arrangement of the Aeolus sonification represents a different type of data: the highest, the piccolo, corresponds to data collected from the tops of clouds using the satellites lasers. The lower instruments, bassoon and bass clarinet, represent data collected much lower close to Earth's surface. Everything in between — clarinets, flutes and oboes — represent variables such as cloud density, air pressure, air temperature and wind velocity.

I just think it's super cool to create art from science and in a way to give this satellite's life another meaning. Also, as the composer said, it provides an accessible way for the visually impaired to interact with science data. I wish they did this for every dying satellite.

Here you can find more info, about the sonification process and there's a video about the music piece and Aeolus which is really nice.

And if you play clarinet, flute or oboe, the ESA has made a part of the sheet music available!!