FLIGHT is one of our most coveted superpowers, vying with mind-reading, teleportation and invisibility in the fantasy of “if you could do anything…”

It’s a curiously mundane ambition: the power of flight is enjoyed by millions of species on Earth (mostly insects), including even ourselves in the form of flying vehicles.

Perhaps it’s not so strange — after all, it’s easiest to want pleasures we can most vividly imagine. We’re surrounded by birds and insects flying majestically around us, so it’s natural that we wish to join them.

For flying to have evolved, it must have offered a real advantage beyond fantasy. It has evolved independently many times: insects, pterosaurs (flying non-dinosaur reptiles), birds and bats each evolved flight separately, from very different starting points.

In each case the ability to fly away from predators and reach new environments seems to have produced a dramatic explosion in adaptation, creating a huge diversity of different flying species. Flying appears to confer such benefits that very few species in each group have lost the power of flight.

History is littered with imagined flying machines that never got off the ground, but successful human flight has been possible for thousands of years. Kites, invented and refined particularly in China for over 2,000 years, can be capable of lifting people if large enough.

A kite can lift up into the sky because air passing underneath the kite is deflected downwards, making it denser and slower, while air passing over the top of the kite is made less dense and faster. The kick of the downwards-deflected air and the low pressure above makes the wing fly upwards. This principle is key to the many species that use gliding flight, as well as those that use flapping to generate the movement of air over the wings in the first place.

The development of successful planes was possible because of the inspiration of natural gliding animals such as flying fish and soaring birds. Previously, preoccupation with replicating flapping had led to many dead ends.

The requirement of a forward force in the absence of strong winds (or heights) was met by an engine, replacing the high energy requirements and technical complexity of flapping. The invention of the internal combustion engine in 1876 produced powered aircraft within 30 years, freeing human flight from dependence on the wind.

Before the development of planes, hot-air balloons had been astonishing the French for over a century. In balloons, the hot air is so much lighter than the surrounding atmosphere that it counteracts the weight of the basket. This makes the whole balloon on average lighter than air and lets it float up to the less dense air above.

With the scientific and engineering advances of the 18th and 19th centuries, the stage was set for the invention of the first plane. However, on the eve of powered flight, only a few years before the Wright brothers’ first demonstration in 1903, a strange thing happened. Eminent physicists lined up to claim not just that planes were not immediately foreseeable but that, unlike balloons, any heavier-than-air vehicle could never fly.

In retrospect, these claims seem strange, given the ubiquity of examples of heavier-than-air flight in nature and the incredible progress in science and engineering that had taken place.

It’s interesting to consider what led scientists to make such wildly wrong statements on the basis of what seemed like plausible arguments. However, for mistakes of this kind, hindsight is 20/20. Our understanding of the world forever overestimates its coherence and prejudices us against appreciating our own misunderstandings and blind spots.

The scientific study of nature is an opportunity to break our assumptions about what is and isn’t possible. Another breakthrough on the nature of flight was achieved only last year by a team of scientists in Edinburgh who found that the motion of dandelion fluff is controlled by a previously undreamt of paradigm of flight.

Each dandelion seed is attached to the end of a long spindle, at the end of which is a disc of little white hairs pointing out radially from the centre. Seeds fly when wind comes from below, moving up the spindle. Air meeting the flat area of a disc is deflected and moves round its outer rim before moving back together on the other side where it collides again in an eddy. The air behind the disc forms a doughnut-shaped “vortex ring” — like a smoke ring.

These vortex rings are very common in fluids — think of the swirling of little whirlpools that trail off behind a moving boat. Normally these vortices cause instabilities in the fluid and get carried away, as in the case of boats. What’s unusual about the dandelion disc is that its porosity means some air moves through it as well as around.

This stops the rotation from being unstable and “tethers” the vortex to the whiskery structure itself. The rotating air hovering just above the fluffy disc produces a force strong enough to lift the seed — and even larger weights.

The team showed that the novel flight mechanism works as the seeds are carried dozens of miles by the wind, surprising physicists, engineers and biologists alike. The team suggest that this form of flight may also be occurring in many other species as well.

It’s astonishing that an entirely new flight mechanism could be discovered right under our noses — for anyone who’s ever blown a dandelion clock — and the finding challenges and inspires us to look with fresh eyes at the world around us.

It’s humbling to recognise how little we know. Our imagination is limited by what we see immediately around us and what we’ve seen before. It is careful inquiry and imagination that can burst that bubble of ignorance.

However, while science may provide glimpses of new ideas, it takes more than insight to change the world. This is where the very different fields of technical engineering and political change are mirrored in one another.

It may be that, just as breakthroughs become inevitable, accusations of impossibility become the most vociferous. When the belief in possibility is founded on clear understanding and good evidence, it is the hard work to present this evidence that will achieve lift-off.