Heavy Metal and Emergent Behavior

You may think that moshing and disordered 2D gases don't have much in common but Jesse Silverberg of Cornell University contends otherwise. He says that mosh pits act just like disordered gases and people in circle pits act in an ordered vortex-like state. From the article: "Silverberg and co gathered their data by examining videos of mosh pits on You Tube... These crowds contain anything from 100 to 100,000 people. After correcting for camera shake and distortions in perspective, they used particle image velicometry techniques to measure the collective motion of moshers. What they discovered was that the speed distribution of moshers closely matches that of molecules in a 2D gas at equilibrium."

Comments

Physicists

[kid-noodle]

Consider a spherical heavy metal fan..

Re:Physicists

[MadKeithV]

Consider a spherical heavy metal fan..

Only if he's in a vacuum.

Metalheads operate in a social vacuum.

Re:Physicists

[lesincompetent]

Phisicists operate in a social vacuum, not metalheads. You are clearly not one of them.

Re:Physicists

[MadKeithV]

Yes.

General phenomena, NKS

[Janek Kozicki]

You might be interested in new kind of science, where Stephen Wolfram argues that fluid (and gas) movement is a general pehonomena, which can be replicated using only very basic rules. And therefore must occur in very broad range of materials, regardless of their underlying precise rules. And he is right. I am no surprised that this also applies to heavy metal crowds.

Re:Who would've thought

[StripedCow]

So physics is actually close to psychology, and not really a hard science.

Peer review......

[voodoo cheesecake]

How music fans act as molecules.

Headbangers + applied energy (awesome riffs & volume) fill a volume as individual particles, do not form products, expand the volume of their "container" as pressure increases and dissipate when applied energy source is removed.

Country line dancers (extremely soluble in ethanol) + applied energy (twangy vocals and guitars + ethanol) enter solution as a binary compound, form complex molecules and then dissipate as binary compounds (not necessarily with the original conjugate species). However, once the molarity of ethanol diminishes, these binary compounds dissolve and seek higher concentrations of ethanol often showing an affinity for elements with a higher electronegativity (redneck factor). It must be noted that country line dancers become highly volatile for no known reason(s) regardless of the concentration of the ethanol solution.

If you argue with me, how about we turn this into a peer reviewed article right here on slashdot!