starling murmuration

[Shaibei]

There is an idealist named Hugo Bergman who cited events as a collaboration between plants and animals, or Jung's synchronicity as possible evidence for idealism

[Brad Walker]

Decentralized, diverse ant colony behavior is more impressive.

[Martin_]

Decentralized, diverse ant colony behavior is more impressive.

Than what?

[Brad Walker]

David Copperfield.

[PHIbonacci]

This is dated 1 March 2021:

Researchers announce a new state of matter: swirlons
Starling flocks, schools of fish, and clouds of insects all agree.

• Scientists discover that active particles take a pass on Newton's Second Law.

• Active particles exist in a "swirlonic" state of matter.

• Swirlonic behavior explains some of the more dazzling natural phenomena such as starling swarms and shape-shifting schools of fish.

"How do these things happen? Consider them super-sized examples of a newly described state of matter that scientists at the University of Leicester in the U.K. are calling "swirlons." And swirlons are something new: They stand in some ways outside Newtonian law."

"We were completely baffled," says Brilliantov, "to witness how these quasi-particles swirl within active matter, behaving like individual super-particles with surprising properties including not moving with acceleration when force is applied, and coalescing upon collision to form swirlons of a larger mass."

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/swirlons

Swirlonic state of active matter

Nikolai V. Brilliantov, Hajar Abutuqayqah, Ivan Yu Tyukin & Sergey A. Matveev

Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 16783 (2020) Cite this article

Abstract

We report a novel state of active matter—a swirlonic state. It is comprised of swirlons, formed by groups of active particles orbiting their common center of mass. These quasi-particles demonstrate a surprising behavior: In response to an external load they move with a constant velocity proportional to the applied force, just as objects in viscous media. The swirlons attract each other and coalesce forming a larger, joint swirlon. The coalescence is extremely slow, decelerating process, resulting in a rarified state of immobile quasi-particles. In addition to the swirlonic state, we observe gaseous, liquid and solid states, depending on the inter-particle and self-driving forces. Interestingly, in contrast to molecular systems, liquid and gaseous states of active matter do not coexist. We explain this unusual phenomenon by the lack of fast particles in active matter. We perform extensive numerical simulations and theoretical analysis. The predictions of the theory agree qualitatively and quantitatively with the simulation results.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73824-4

[Soul_of_Shu]

Hmmm ... swirlons? ... is there no end to the QM rabbit hole? Somehow not surprising that someone named Brilliantov is involved