(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

Preparing to launch from the sea to Antarctic sea ice, an Emperor penguin reaches maximum speed.

You thought "The March of the Penguins" was cool? Check out the launch of the penguins — an aerodynamic phenomenon that helps these flightless birds take flight.

Emperor penguins can't fly just by flapping their wings, but they can propel themselves fast enough through Antarctic waters to turn themselves into winged rockets. They do it by releasing tiny bubbles of air from their feathers: The air acts as a lubricant, reducing drag as they swim up from the depths like tuxedoed torpedoes. In fact, engineers have used air bubbles in similar ways to speed the movement of torpedoes through the water.

Who knew that penguins have been doing the same sort of thing for eons? University College Cork's John Davenport knew: He and his colleagues studied video footage from the BBC's "Blue Planet" TV series to develop a biochemical model for the penguins' torpedo trick. They were amazed to find that the birds' speed was due to the "coat of air bubbles" streaming from their feathers.

National Geographic

The penguin images are from the November edition of National Geographic magazine. The electronic versions of the report include an exclusive video and interactive graphic that show penguins rocketing onto the ice.

Before the penguins dive into the water, they ruffle their plumage to trap air within the feathers' structure. A deep dive compresses the air into a smaller volume. When the penguins go into their launch, the decompressing air is released through pores in the feathers — creating a layer of tiny, lubricating bubbles.

The trick is described for scientists in the Marine Ecology Progress Series, and for the rest of us in November's issue of National Geographic magazine. The heart of the magazine story is Paul Nicklen's pictures, which have just won him top honors in the Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

"We wanted to change people's perception of penguins as ungainly animals," said Nicklen, who has followed penguins and other polar species for years, and admits he's always had an obsession with Antarctica. "The biologist in me was trying to learn about the science."

And he did learn more about the biological background for the bubble trick: Penguins are preyed upon by leopard seals, which lie in wait beneath the ice to ambush the birds during their ascent from the depths. "The penguins know they're there, and as they're coming up ... it's like someone turns on a tap, and there are millions of microbubbles pouring over their bodies."

The supercharged speed helps the penguins elude their predators and shoot up to safety on the ice, Nicklen said. The masses of bubbles have another defensive effect: They confuse the seals as they try to swim in for the attack. Nicklen himself found out how that feels. When he got too close to the penguins underwater, they released a bubbly barrage.

"It was like I was floating through space, in a sea of bubbles," he said.

The online version of National Geographic's penguin spread will feature a video and interactive graphic showing in detail how the penguins rocket out of the water and onto the ice. Next week, the photographer will unveil an app called "Paul Nicklen: Pole to Pole," with more images. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these images from National Geographic, plus two bonus videos:

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

An airborne penguin shows why it has a need for speed: to get out of the water, it may have to clear several feet of ice. A fast exit also helps it elude leopard seals, which often lurk at the ice edge.

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

Life is safer at the colony, where predators are few and company is close.

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

The danger of ambush by seals is greatest when entering the water, so penguins may linger near an ice hole for hours, waiting for the first bird to dive.

(c) Paul Nicklen / National Geographic

"These penguins have probably never seen a human in the water," says photographer Paul Nicklen, "but it took them only seconds to realize that I posed no danger. They relaxed and allowed me to share their hole in the sea ice." This photo earned Nicklen the Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.

More about penguins:

• Penguins' graphic sexual acts shocked researcher
• Not-so-happy feet: You're stressing out the penguins
• Satellite view doubles Emperor penguin count
• Chinstrap penguin colony declines as ice and food shrink

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Anyone who's watched "The March of the Penguins" knows that Emperor penguins huddle together to cope with the harsh temperatures and winds of the Antarctic winter. It's a great deal for the birds inside the tightly packed scrum, but how do the penguins on the periphery get their turn?

Researchers spent a whole winter in 2008 tracking the movements of an Emperor penguin colony at Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica, and they present their answer this week in the open-access journal PLoS ONE. It turns out that the penguins engage in a series of continuous, coordinated shuffles that cause the birds on the outside to shift toward the interior, and push other birds toward the outside.

"Every 30-60 seconds, all penguins make small steps that travel as a wave through the entire huddle," the researchers write. "Over time, these small movements lead to large-scale reorganization of the huddle."

That's right: Penguins know how to do the wave.

The dynamics are so subtle that they're hard to interpret just by looking at the huddle. But when they're recorded on high-definition time-lapse video, the scientists say they can see a "striking analogy" to the movement of fluids such as soft glasses and colloids.

The challenge for the penguins is to huddle together closely enough to conserve body heat, but keep loose enough to avoid "colloidal jamming." That's the physical phenomenon you encounter when you try to pour ketchup out of a jammed-up bottle. (Ketchup is just one of the tasty colloids you might find in your kitchen; others include pudding and ice cream, peanut butter and jelly.)

The researchers say that penguins avoid getting permanently jammed up or squished by doing those little shuffle steps every 30 to 60 seconds. The penguins on the periphery push inward, which is like tapping the side of the ketchup bottle. Inside the huddle, the steps cause the birds to shift around, and the mass starts moving forward. Some penguins who join the huddle at the trailing edge. Others leave the huddle at the leading edge. Separate bunches of the birds flow together into bigger bunches, creating a critical mass. In a news release, the process is compared to kneading dough.

"This is an essential process in condensed matter physics, penguins included," the researchers write. "In further support of the phase transition analogy, we note that when the huddle breaks up, it occurs very rapidly, similar to the sharp jump in densities between ... a gas and liquid state."

Studying the dynamics of the Antarctic huddle could conceivably help scientists develop better models for other types of mass behavior, ranging from fish schools to traffic jams. The researchers note that the physics of traveling waves can be applied to the pushy interactions of panicky humans as well as the subtler shuffles of Emperor penguins. 

"Why these waves are uncoordinated, turbulent and dangerous in a human crowd but not in a penguin huddle remain an open question but may possibly depend on the shape and magnitude of the interaction potential, and on the distance of the system from an effective temperature characterizing a critical point," they write. Here's another issue yet to be studied: whether the actions of particular penguins trigger the emergence of the wave, similar to the collective behavior observed in flocks of pigeons.

You just might hear more about huddling penguins in the years to come: The leader of the research team, physicist Daniel Zitterbart from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, is setting up a remote-controlled observatory in Antarctica to study penguins all year round. Who knows? Maybe one of these days we'll be watching a sequel to the earlier documentary, titled "The Wave of the Penguins."

More about penguins:

• Naked penguins baffle scientists
• Gay penguin pair raising chick
• How the penguin changed its feathers
• How penguins survive those deep dives

In addition to Zitterbart, co-authors of "Coordinated Movements Prevent Jamming in an Emperor Penguin Huddle" include Ben Fabry from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, James Butler from Harvard University and Barbara Wienecke from the Australian Antarctic Division.

You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.