Physicists discover surprisingly complex states emerging out of simple synchronized networks

Fireflies, heart cells, clocks, and power grids all do it—they can spontaneously sync up, sending signals out in unison. For centuries, scientists have been perplexed by this self-organizing behavior, coming up with theories and experiments that make up the science of sync. But despite progress being made in the field, mysteries still persist—in particular how networks of completely identical elements can fall out of sync.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-physicists-surprisingly-complex-states-emerging.html#jCp

What happens if the brain goes out of sync, moodyness, impairment ?

Are they hinting that they can put an out of sync brain back into sync ?

Tau.Neutrino said:

Physicists discover surprisingly complex states emerging out of simple synchronized networks

Fireflies, heart cells, clocks, and power grids all do it—they can spontaneously sync up, sending signals out in unison. For centuries, scientists have been perplexed by this self-organizing behavior, coming up with theories and experiments that make up the science of sync. But despite progress being made in the field, mysteries still persist—in particular how networks of completely identical elements can fall out of sync.

What happens if the brain goes out of sync, moodyness, impairment ?

Are they hinting that they can put an out of sync brain back into sync ?

Considering the mythbusters experiment with metronomes in sync and out of sync. It seems as if the brain could be put back in sync by reducing the number of neurons. LOL.

But more seriously, you don’t want the brain in sync. That’s what an epileptic fit is. There’s a lot of research in how to stop the brain being in sync.Medication helps 80% of epilepsy patients to reduce the severity of the syncing.

> how networks of completely identical elements

Completely identical – that’s interesting from a fundamental physics amd mathematics point of view. Rather than from a macroscopic point of view.

>Completely identical

i’d reckon the only things absolutely identical anywhere in the universe is the same thing counted again, and possibly counted at exactly the same moment (i’d have to think about last part).

transition said:

>Completely identical

i’d reckon the only things absolutely identical anywhere in the universe is the same thing counted again, and possibly counted at exactly the same moment (i’d have to think about last part).

Not quite, but it would have to be pretty small to be completely identical. Two protein molecules can be completely identical despite being about 50 kDa in mass.

I can envisage having transistors on a chip made completely identical, perhaps, or say a nanoscale cantilever.

Suppose we carry out the experiment with a collection of nanoscale cantilevers vibrating together in and out of sync on the same chip.

mollwollfumble said:

transition said:

>Completely identical

i’d reckon the only things absolutely identical anywhere in the universe is the same thing counted again, and possibly counted at exactly the same moment (i’d have to think about last part).

Not quite, but it would have to be pretty small to be completely identical. Two protein molecules can be completely identical despite being about 50 kDa in mass.

I can envisage having transistors on a chip made completely identical, perhaps, or say a nanoscale cantilever.

Suppose we carry out the experiment with a collection of nanoscale cantilevers vibrating together in and out of sync on the same chip.

I’m meaning two things that occupy different space can’t be exactly the same. They are different by being in different places. The existence of things is essentially displacement, exact sameness can’t happen.

maybe not soof the (sub)particle world, quantum or whatever.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Physicists discover surprisingly complex states emerging out of simple synchronized networks

Fireflies, heart cells, clocks, and power grids all do it—they can spontaneously sync up, sending signals out in unison. For centuries, scientists have been perplexed by this self-organizing behavior, coming up with theories and experiments that make up the science of sync. But despite progress being made in the field, mysteries still persist—in particular how networks of completely identical elements can fall out of sync.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-physicists-surprisingly-complex-states-emerging.html#jCp

> In this video, the researchers show an example of synchronization. In the beginning, no apparent phase order is seen at any point in time and the oscillators are not synchronized. This is because the oscillators are uncoupled. However, in this system we have control over coupling. As they turn on the coupling they observe a stark transition to an antiphase synchronized state.

Video shows clear failure of conservation of angular momentum – if they can’t even get their basic physics right, why should we trust the final result?