Here's a nice pure science story who think, mistakenly, that sentience is required to produce order from disorder.
According to a computational study conducted by a group of physicists at Washington University in St. Louis, one may create order by introducing disorder.
While working on their model ? a network of interconnected pendulums, or "oscillators" ? the researchers noticed that when driven by ordered forces the various pendulums behaved chaotically and swung out of sync like a group of intoxicated synchronized swimmers. This was unexpected ? shouldn't synchronized forces yield synchronized pendulums?
But then came the real surprise: When they introduced disorder ? forces were applied at random to each oscillator ? the system became ordered and synchronized.
"The thing that is counterintuitive is that when you introduce disorder into the system ? when the [forces on the pendulums] act at random ? the chaos that was present before disappears and there is order," said Sebastian F. Brandt, Washington University physicsgraduate student in Arts & Science and lead author of the study which appeared in the January 2006 edition of Physical Review Letters.
Source ... and more at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060405100014.htm Science keeps making progress. Drat!
