Skip to main content

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

3 comments

These Swarms Of Microrobots Can Move & Lift Big Objects Without Touching Them

The phrase E pluribus unum—“out of many, one”—is famously inscribed on the United States’ Great Seal, symbolizing unity from diversity. Surprisingly, this idea also captures the essence of cutting-edge microrobotics research. A team of scientists from Cornell University and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has demonstrated how a swarm of tiny microrobots can work together to manipulate objects on a water surface without ever touching them. Their work, recently published in Science Advances, could pave the way for performing microscale tasks and delicate biomedical procedures that traditional robots cannot achieve.

The Challenge of Micromanipulation

Microrobots operate on scales too small for conventional mechanical designs or onboard computers. When dealing with delicate tasks at the microscale, direct physical contact can be limiting or even destructive. This makes alternative methods of manipulation crucial. As Kirstin Petersen, associate professor at Cornell and co-senior author of the study, explains:

"At small scales, contact-based manipulation can be limiting, and flow-based manipulation offers a great alternative. We're showing that in spite of their size, adding more microrobots creates stronger flows and greater torque transfer."

In essence, instead of relying on a single robot to do a complex task, the team leveraged the collective behavior of many simple robots to create powerful, emergent effects.

Simple Disks, Complex Behavior

At first glance, these microrobots might seem unremarkable. They are simple 3D-printed polymer disks, each just 300 micrometers across—smaller than a grain of sand. Because they are too tiny to carry batteries, sensors, or computers, the researchers designed a clever way to control them externally. Each disk is coated with a thin layer of ferromagnetic material and placed in a small, 1.5-centimeter-wide pool of water. When subjected to carefully tuned oscillating magnetic fields, the disks spin in place.

The spinning disks, though individually simple, interact with one another and with their fluid environment. Through a combination of hydrodynamic, capillary, and magnetic forces, the disks create collective flows that enable coordinated behavior. Petersen describes it as transforming a group of small mechanical rafts into a single, functioning system:

"We call them microrobots, but truly the individual agents are just mechanical rafts, and you can think of the whole system as a robot. When they spin, they create flows, and the interactions between individuals change the behavior of the collective."

The key insight is that these interactions generate emergent phenomena—complex behaviors that arise naturally from the combination of simple elements. With this approach, the collective can perform tasks far beyond the capability of any individual disk.

From Patterns to Practical Work

Earlier experiments in Petersen’s Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab and with the Max Planck Institute had shown that the microrobots could self-organize into various patterns. Building on that foundation, the team conducted experiments to explore more practical applications.

The researchers tested swarms ranging from 10 to 1,000 microrobots. Even at these tiny scales, the disks generated sufficient fluidic torque—the force transmitted through fluid flows—to manipulate passive structures. Their experiments included:

  • Rotating multiple concentric rings simultaneously

  • Turning circular gears and rack-and-pinion systems

  • Operating grippers and buoy-like 3D structures

  • Absorbing and expelling dozens of passive objects

These demonstrations highlighted the versatility of collective microrobots. Petersen emphasizes the challenge of modeling such systems:

"Modeling many interacting microrobots at these scales is challenging. So we combined experiments and simulations to understand how their collective flows and interactions produce these behaviors."

By integrating real-world experiments with computational models, the team was able to predict and explain how the microrobots’ collective forces translate into useful work.

Unexpected “Crawling” Behavior

While the microrobots performed as expected in most tasks, the team observed an intriguing and unexpected phenomenon. When introduced to larger rotating objects—on the scale of a few millimeters—the disks began to exhibit a novel crawling behavior.

Initially, the disks were evenly distributed around the object. However, at specific frequencies of magnetic oscillation, they clustered on one side and moved together around the perimeter, almost as if crawling. Petersen explains:

"It emerges from how the bots’ flows interact with each other and with the object's boundary. It's a behavior that could be useful in the future for controlled transport or positioning at small scales."

This discovery shows that the interactions of microrobots can give rise to behaviors that are not explicitly programmed but emerge naturally from the physics of the system. Such emergent phenomena could be crucial in future applications where flexible, adaptive actions are needed.

Biomedical and Microscale Applications

One of the most promising aspects of this research is its potential for biomedical use. Because the microrobots can collectively generate and transmit torque through fluid flows, they can manipulate objects without physical contact. This property is essential for handling delicate tissues, cells, or microscopic structures in medical procedures.

"We've shown that these microrobots can be added to a wide range of passive structures to actuate them," Petersen notes. "Instead of building a larger integrated mechanism, you can use a collective of simple microrobots to drive millimeter-scale elements such as gears or grippers."

Such systems could one day assist in tasks like targeted drug delivery, microsurgery, or the manipulation of biological samples, all while minimizing the risk of damage.

The Team Behind the Breakthrough

The study was led by Steven Ceron, Ph.D., now an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. The project also involved Gaurav Gardi, who developed the computational model, and Metin Sitti from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. Their combined expertise in robotics, fluid mechanics, and simulation made this ambitious project possible.

The paper, Fluidic Torque-Enabled Object Manipulation by Microrobot Collectives, was published in Science Advances in 2026 (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea9947).

Looking Ahead

The research opens the door to a new paradigm in microrobotics: using swarms of simple agents to achieve complex outcomes. Unlike traditional robotics, where each unit must be powerful and individually capable, this approach leverages collective intelligence, emergent behaviors, and fluid interactions to multiply effectiveness.

As Petersen puts it:

"The idea is simple: out of many, one. A collective of simple microrobots can act as a single intelligent system, capable of tasks that none of them could perform alone."

This principle could redefine how microscale machines are designed, making them more adaptable, efficient, and capable of delicate operations. Future research will likely explore more complex tasks, varied environments, and even integration with living systems for biomedical interventions.

In a world where robotics continues to shrink in scale while expanding in capability, these tiny spinning disks are proving that sometimes, the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts.

Reference: 

  • Steven Ceron et al.
    •  
, 
Fluidic torque–enabled object manipulation by microrobot collectives.Sci. Adv.12,eaea9947(2026).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aea9947

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

For years, scientists believed that adding even one qubit (a unit of quantum information) to a black hole needed energy. This was based on the idea that a black hole’s entropy must increase with more information, which means it must gain energy. But a new study by Jonah Kudler-Flam and Geoff Penington changes that thinking. They found that quantum information can be teleported into a black hole without adding energy or increasing entropy . This works through a process called black hole decoherence , where “soft” radiation — very low-energy signals — carry information into the black hole. In their method, the qubit enters the black hole while a new pair of entangled particles (like Hawking radiation) is created. This keeps the total information balanced, so there's no violation of the laws of physics. The energy cost only shows up when information is erased from the outside — these are called zerobits . According to Landauer’s principle, erasing information always needs energy. But ...
3 comments
Read more

Black Holes That Never Dies

Black holes are powerful objects in space with gravity so strong that nothing can escape them. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes can slowly lose energy by giving off tiny particles. This process is called Hawking radiation . Over time, the black hole gets smaller and hotter, and in the end, it disappears completely. But new research by Menezes and his team shows something different. Using a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) , they studied black holes with quantum corrections. In their model, the black hole does not vanish completely. Instead, it stops shrinking when it reaches a very small size. This leftover is called a black hole remnant . They also studied something called grey-body factors , which affect how much energy escapes from a black hole. Their findings show that the black hole cools down and stops losing mass once it reaches a minimum mass . This new model removes the idea of a “singularity” at the center of the black hole and gives us a better ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Planetary Movements Might Explain Sunspot Cycles and Solar Phenomena

Sunspots, dark patches on the Sun's surface, follow a cycle of increasing and decreasing activity every 11 years. For years, scientists have relied on the dynamo model to explain this cycle. According to this model, the Sun's magnetic field is generated by the movement of plasma and the Sun's rotation. However, this model does not fully explain why the sunspot cycle is sometimes unpredictable. Lauri Jetsu, a researcher, has proposed a new approach. Jetsu’s analysis, using a method called the Discrete Chi-square Method (DCM), suggests that planetary movements, especially those of Earth, Jupiter, and Mercury, play a key role in driving the sunspot cycle. His theory focuses on Flux Transfer Events (FTEs), where the magnetic fields of these planets interact with the Sun’s magnetic field. These interactions could create the sunspots and explain other solar phenomena like the Sun’s magnetic polarity reversing every 11 years. The Sun, our closest star, has been a subject of scient...
Post a Comment
Read more