Skip to main content

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

3 comments

Scientists Built a “Soft Robot Fish” That Could Explore the Ocean Without Harming Marine Life

Beneath the surface of Earth’s oceans, rivers, and lakes lies a hidden world filled with incredible ecosystems, ancient shipwrecks, and unknown discoveries. Scientists and explorers have always searched for better ways to study these underwater environments, but traditional underwater robots often face a major challenge: they are powerful, but not gentle enough for delicate spaces.

Coral reefs, underwater caves, and marine habitats are extremely fragile. A small collision from a heavy robotic vehicle can damage living organisms that may take decades or even centuries to recover. To explore these environments safely, researchers are developing a new generation of underwater robots that can move with flexibility, precision, and minimal disturbance.

One such breakthrough is DRAGON 3D (Deformable Robot for Agile Guided Observation and Navigation in Three-Dimensions) — a soft, flexible underwater robot designed to move through complex underwater spaces while interacting safely with the environment.

The Challenge of Traditional Underwater Robots

Most existing underwater robots fall into two categories: autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). These machines have played a major role in ocean exploration, scientific research, and underwater engineering.

However, they are mainly designed for open-water environments where there is plenty of space to move. They often rely on rigid structures, multiple thrusters, and powerful propulsion systems. While this makes them effective in deep oceans, it becomes a limitation when navigating narrow spaces, caves, coral reefs, or areas filled with obstacles.

A rigid robot may struggle to move around delicate structures without causing damage. It may also require complex control systems to change direction, maintain stability, and operate efficiently.

Researchers wanted to create a robot that could combine the best qualities of both worlds: the strength and control of traditional underwater vehicles with the flexibility and safety of biological organisms.

A Robot Inspired by Nature

Nature has already solved many movement challenges. Fish, sea creatures, and other aquatic animals can move efficiently through water because their bodies are flexible and adapt to their surroundings.

Taking inspiration from this idea, scientists developed DRAGON 3D as a biomimetic soft robot. Instead of using a rigid body, the robot has a deformable structure that can change shape while moving underwater.

This flexible design allows DRAGON 3D to navigate through tight and complicated environments while reducing the risk of damaging nearby objects or living organisms.

The robot uses a unique system that combines a single thruster with a cable-actuated flexible body. By changing the shape of its body, DRAGON 3D can control its movement in three dimensions — moving forward, turning, changing depth, and navigating around obstacles.

Balancing Flexibility and Control

Soft robots have many advantages, but they also come with challenges. Flexible materials can make robots safer and more adaptable, but controlling their movements is much harder compared with traditional rigid machines.

A major goal of DRAGON 3D’s development was to solve this problem: creating a robot that is flexible enough to safely explore complex environments while still being precise and controllable.

To achieve this, researchers created a dynamic model and computer simulations to understand how the robot moves underwater. These simulations helped guide motion planning and improve the robot’s ability to follow specific paths.

The system was tested through multiple experimental trajectories to confirm that the robot could accurately perform different underwater movements.

Testing in Real-World Environments

DRAGON 3D was not only tested in controlled laboratory conditions but also in natural environments. Researchers evaluated its performance in a swimming pool, a shallow riverbed, and a coastal pier.

These tests showed that the robot could handle different underwater conditions and successfully perform complex movements.

The robot was also tested with an acoustic communication system, demonstrating the possibility of operating without a physical tether. This is an important step toward creating independent underwater exploration robots that can travel freely.

Exploring Confined Spaces

One of the most impressive demonstrations of DRAGON 3D was its ability to explore narrow and challenging environments.

During experiments, the robot successfully performed teleoperated maneuvers such as slalom movements, targeted depth changes, and navigation through confined spaces.

It was tested inside a cave environment and a mock shipwreck, similar to the types of locations where traditional underwater robots often struggle.

The robot’s flexible body allowed it to move through these areas while avoiding obstacles and maintaining control.

Helping Scientists Study Marine Life

Beyond navigation tests, DRAGON 3D also demonstrated its potential as a scientific research tool.

The robot captured underwater videos of marine organisms and collected environmental data using sensors in both freshwater and marine environments.

Because it can move gently through sensitive habitats, it could become a valuable tool for studying coral reefs, monitoring ecosystems, and observing aquatic species without disturbing their natural behavior.

The Future of Gentle Underwater Exploration

The development of DRAGON 3D represents an important step toward safer and more sustainable underwater exploration.

Future underwater robots will likely need to do more than simply move through water. They will need to interact with complex ecosystems while minimizing their impact.

By combining soft robotics, advanced control systems, and nature-inspired design, DRAGON 3D shows that robots can be both powerful and gentle.

From studying unknown marine ecosystems to inspecting underwater structures and exploring hidden environments, flexible robots like DRAGON 3D could change how humans discover and protect the underwater world.

The oceans remain one of Earth’s greatest mysteries, and with technologies like this, scientists are moving closer to exploring them in a smarter, safer, and more environmentally friendly way.

Reference: Hall, R.F., Lee, B.A., Serocki, Z.D. et al. A soft robot for agile and efficient marine locomotion. npj Robot (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44182-026-00089-w

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