You never know what you will see when you go on an adventure. On a canoe outing, Sophie Windsor Clive and Liberty Smith happened upon "one of nature's greatest and most fleeting phenomena" that I never even knew existed - a flock of starlings, known as a murmuration. It appears to be a magnificently choreographed dance, but it is completely spontaneous.
"The math equations that best describe starling movement are borrowed 'from the literature of "criticality," of crystal formation and avalanches -- systems poised on the brink, capable of near-instantaneous transformation.' They call it 'scale-free correlation,' and it means that no matter how big the flock, 'If any one bird turned and changed speed, so would all the others.' "
Via The Atlantic.
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