RE: Latest science news from the arXiv.

[Mike Marchywka <marchywka@hotmail.com>]

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> Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 16:24:33 +0100
> From:
> To: cygwin-talk@cygwin.com
> Subject: Latest science news from the arXiv.
>
>
> Apparently, a cow is a simple oscillator, and a herd of them is a field-full
> of coupled oscillators:
>
> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25171/
>
> I think we can all safely agree that this would imply that the hippo is an
> astable.
>
> Also, does this mean that if you could persuade just one cow in a field to
> repeatedly lie down and stand up at the exact resonant frequency of the
> coupling, you could get runaway oscillations until the entire herd were
> frantically leaping in the air and then falling to their knees as fast as they
> could?

Actually a well modelled nonlinear system usually has saturation and dissipation,
so it is less likely here (unless it really happens in real life ) than in the "Assume speherical weakly coupled cow" model.
Coupled oscillators are really interesting because couplings that seem "small" as in irrelevant
can produce macroscopic effects. 
Now, if these were mortgage backed securities instead of cows, well, anything is possible.
LOL.




>
> cheers,
> DaveK
>
 		 	   		  
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