Exploring chaos on the nanometer scale

Chaotic behavior is typically known from large systems: for example, from weather, from asteroids in space that are simultaneously attracted by several large celestial bodies, or from swinging pendulums that are coupled together. ...

Mathematicians explain how some fireflies flash in sync

Stake out in Pennsylvania's Cook State Forest at the right time of year and you can see one of nature's great light shows: swarms of fireflies that synchronize their flashes like strings of Christmas lights in the dark.

Exploring quantum gravity and entanglement using pendulums

When it comes to a marriage with quantum theory, gravity is the lone holdout among the four fundamental forces in nature. The three others—the electromagnetic force, the weak force, which is responsible for radioactive ...

Anti-gravity: How a boat can float upside down

Here on Earth, everything is subject to gravity—it makes objects fall to the ground and rivers flow from higher ground to the sea. We know what would happen without it, thanks to images of astronauts floating around their ...

Using physics to map the chaos of movement in living organisms

The behavior of living organisms might obey the same mathematical laws as physical phenomena, such as weather and the motion of planets, says new research from the Biological Physics Theory Unit at the Okinawa Institute of ...

New study shows nanoscale pendulum coupling

In 1665, Lord Christiaan Huygens found that two pendulum clocks, hung in the same wooden structure, oscillated spontaneously and perfectly in line but in opposite directions: the clocks oscillated in anti-phase. Since then, ...

Clock mystery from 350 years ago is shedding light on human health

In 1665, the inventor of the pendulum clock, Christiaan Huygens, noticed that two of his clocks hung on the same wall would eventually sync up, so that their pendulums swung in opposite directions in perfect time. This "insensible ...

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