Linking biology to physics.

TurbulentBoids

Turbulence, organized chaos, has been a subject of study for hundreds of years. Fuel injectors, based on several factors ranging from ambient air to the pressure in the pipeline before ejection, can show turbulence after free expansion in laminar flow. It is plausible that a link between turbulence and biological flocking behavior could be found, as shown in these programs. We observe laminar flow in the normal fuel-injector program and turbulent flow in an enclosed space in the boid program. The boid program is based on Craig Reynolds' work on Boid Algorithms, where the boids all rely on three factors—separation, coherence, and alignment. And we see that these same properties could be applied to particle physics to simulate turbulence as a CFD would. 

The significance lies in understanding how our world could be more interconnected than we think. Flocking is omnipresent, as we see in bacteria movement, ant colonies, human mob behavior, bird murmurations, and schools of fish—turbulence exists everywhere, from airplanes to the very area this is being read from. And now, the TurbulentBoids software has demonstrated that there could be a link between the two.