Contrarian readers just can't get enough of those starlings: H/T: Joshua...

10 November, 2011

Contrarian friend Dave Atkinson one-ups that video of a starling flock's undulations. Walking home the other day from my work at the University of Prince Edward Island, I saw two men ahead of me on the Confederation Trail. They were mesmerized by something in the sky. One of them was taking photographs with his phone. At first, I thought they were watching an eagle, as they're not uncommon in Charlottetown. When I caught up to them, they asked if I could see the magic smoke. "Magic smoke?" I asked, wondering if they'd inhaled some. "Yeah, look!" Low on the horizon, a few hundred metres away, whisps of...

07 November, 2011

Two women in a canoe on Ireland's River Shannon stumble across one of nature’s greatest phenomena: a murmuration of starlings. Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo. H/T to The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal who writes: The starlings coordinated movements do not seem possible, but then there they are doing it. Scientists have been similarly fascinated by starling movement. Those synchronized dips and waves seem to hold secrets about perception and group dynamics. Last year, Italian theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi took on the challenge of explaining the murmuration. What he found, as ably explained by my old Wired colleague Brandon Keim, is that the math equations that...

07 November, 2011