A Universe in Sync

So what do inanimate objects, quantum particles, electricity, the planets, our own heart and brain cells all have in common?

Awnser - Synchrony!

Synchrony is present throughout the heart and the whole of the universe

or as Strogatz more eloquently said

“At the heart of the universe is a steady, insistent beat: the sound of cycles in sync …. The tendency to synchronise is one of the most pervasive drives in the universe, extending from atoms to animals from people to planets”.

Although I’m not going to pretend I understand biology or physics well enough to write a detailed or wholly accurate blog on this subject, I did do a coursera on the topic recently, so I’m now the proud owner of a very basic understanding. And it’s so fascinating that I couldn’t not mention what I’ve learned from Steven Strogatz’s book ‘Sync’.

Our bodies display synchrony within themselves and with the outside world. Our pace maker cells all fire synchronously to a rhythm, and a disruption in that time rhythm can cause a whole host of cardiovascular problems.

Each and every organ is composed of distinct cellular oscillations, with chemical and electrical rhythms moving in lockstep, every organ period matching with each other to the 24 hour cycle on which most of us spend our lives.

Our bodies are entrained to this 24 hour cycle, sleeping at given times and awaking at others. All throughout the day our bodies go through periodic cycles of awake and alertness, sleep and drowsiness driven by the time keeping of the sun and the peaks and troughs of our internal temperatures. It seems that even when we are deep in sleep, our bodies don’t stop synchronising.

But synchrony isn’t just apparent in the living world; it is present in inanimate object too. Without synchrony we wouldn’t have CD players, barcode scanners or laser surgery. The way masses of atoms can multiply and form into a single laser beam is through their ability to synchronously emit light waves of the same phase and colour.

In fact it seems there’s as many examples of entrainment in inanimate objects as there are in the living realm. As it happens, without synchrony we wouldn’t even have the power grids that pump electricity to all of our homes since a necessary condition of a functioning power grid is that the generators remain synchronous, and when the grid desynchronize, the power goes out.

Synchrony exists outside of our own little part of the universe too, in the way two planets orbit round their stars in step, so that as one orbits exactly once, the other has orbited exactly twice. Or the way our moon turns own its own axis at precisely the same rate it orbits earth.

Strogatz even proposes that this kind of astronomical synchrony may even explain how we acquired our life giving oceans and maybe even extinction of the dinosaurs

But to learn how, you’ll just have to read his book, or at least watch his ted talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync

http://www.stevenstrogatz.com/books/sync-the-emerging-science-of-spontaneous-order

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