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Fish school, insects swarm and birds fly in murmurations. Now, new research finds that on the most basic level, this kind of group behavior forms a new kind of active matter, called a swirlonic state. 

Physical laws such as Newton’s second law of motion — which states that as a force applied to an object increases, its acceleration increases, and that as the object’s mass increases, its acceleration decreases — apply to passive, nonliving matter, ranging from atoms to planets. But much of the matter in the world is active matter and moves under its own, self-directed, force, said Nikolai Brilliantov, a mathematician at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia and the University of Leicester in England. Living things as diverse as bacteria, birds and humans can interact with the forces upon them. There are examples of non-living active matter, too. Nanoparticles known as “Janus particles,” are made up of two sides with different chemical properties. The interactions between the two sides create self-propelled movement.

To explore active matter, Brilliantov and his colleagues used a computer to simulate particles that could self-propel. These particles weren’t consciously interacting with the environment, Brilliantov told Live Science. Rather, they were more akin to simple bacteria or nanoparticles with internal sources of energy, but without information-processing abilities. 

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(Image credit: Alex Solich/Getty)

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On February 18, if all goes according to plan, Perseverance, NASA’s latest-and-greatest rover, will land on Mars. Around 3 PM EST, Percy will attempt its tricky Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) maneuver. If it survives the experience, Percy will join the Curiosity rover as humanity’s foremost interplanetary explorers.

To get this tricky orbital choreography just right, NASA pushed forward with the $2.7 billion mission despite the spread of the novel coronavirus. “It’s very expensive if we have to take Perseverance and put it back in storage for a period of two years,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, said at a June 17 press conference.

Perseverance wasn’t the only mission hoping to take advantage of the orbital alignment. China National Space Administration rover (and orbiter) Tianwen-1 arrived at the Red Planet last week, and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Mars orbiter arrived as well. ESA and Roscosmos were supposed to launch their ExoMars rover, dubbed Rosalind Franklin, in summer 2020, but work was delayed due to the spread of the coronavirus and the agencies postponed the launch. The rover will blast off in about two years.

NASA hopes that its newest rover, designed and developed in cooperation with partners from the European Space Agency, as well as researchers from Norway, Spain, and France—will be the first to find evidence of life outside of our pale, blue dot. 

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NASA/JPL-Caltech

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