A mathematical model first proposed by Alan Turing 71 years ago may finally have been confirmed.
Turing was a British mathematician who in 1952he suggested that patterns arise in nature due to a chemical reaction between two homogeneous substances. He described it in his only published article, written while working at the University of Manchester, UK. These patterns can be seen on many species of plants and animals, from the black and white stripes of a zebra to the ridges on cacti.
Last summer, Brendan D'Aquino, a studentfrom the computer science department at Northeastern University in Boston, tested Turing's theory with Flavio Fenton, a professor of physics at Georgia Tech, during a summer internship. They presented their findings to the American Physical Society. The work has not yet been reviewed.
As part of the study, scientists uniformlydistributed the chia seeds into eight separate trays using different planting methods and watered them daily. They also applied three different growing parameters to the seeds, varying the amount of water. Then they let nature do the rest. Within a week, they began to notice the appearance of patterns reminiscent of those found in the natural environment, such as fields of vegetation or animal fur. Their creation and intensity were influenced by the amount of water and its evaporation.
What they observed was similar to a computer simulation the researchers created using Turing's model, but using vegetation.
Scientists are only now finding certainchemicals and signals within biological systems that explain visual patterns in nature. By varying the amount of chemicals both in the laboratory and in the corresponding mathematics, we have shown that Turing's theory is correct.
Natasha Ellison, a mathematical ecologist and researcher at the University of Mississippi, was not involved in the experiment.
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Cover: Experiments showing how chia seeds (top row) grow in Turing's water-based model compared to computer simulations (bottom row)
Image courtesy of Brendan D’Aquino and Flavio Fenton