Howard Stone's group identify a particle surfing in its own wave

In this video, a marble-sized sphere is falling through a tank of silicone oil, a viscous, honey-like liquid, alongside a thin rubber sheet.  You can see that at the beginning, the sheet and marble are almost touching, but as the sphere falls, the two grow further apart. 

This evvect - a particle surfing its own wave – was identified by a team of researchers from Howard Stone’s lab in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, along with their counterparts at the Flatiron Institute and the Center for Soft Matter Research, both in New York. They hope this research will help measure elastic properties of biological membranes, or help learn how to separate particles.