The chaos and order debate came up again recently in an online think tank and this time is was nothing like the regular debates, no, this time it was with regards to locust plagues and the question was is the locust swarm a chaotic mess or is their a method to this highly evolved creatures madness? One researcher who is an expert in Locust Swarms; Mr Warren Powers thinks that there is a remote possibility that in the locust swarm there might actually be more going on than we assume and so he asks the question;

The other idea is that the whole of the swarm is in synchronicity, meaning that all the wings are moving down at exactly the same instant, up at the same instant. This is such a startling idea that surely it would have become obvious to the first slow motion study of the wing motion of a swarm, this would have already been common knowledge.

It could be possible actually and remember that if the swarm is 5 miles wide every 900 feet or so that the locusts would be on a different stroke, due to the speed of sound even if they were in unison. Like a column of marching soldiers; but sense the swarm could be miles across and miles wide, where does it start? And does it go outwards in all directions or are there swarms and groups within the overall swarm flapping in cadence with their local sub-swarm? Net-centric like; A swarm of swarms? And before I get too Sci Fi like here let me tell you why I say that.

Because if the swarm were to have cadence and it started from the front of the pack it would travel around the edges and sides and thru the middle and outward. Then when it reached the back there would be a conflict with cadence, due to the distance from the front to back and the difference around the sides. So then if they are all in unison then it would make sense that the heart or most center mass of the swarm was the original cadence moving out in all directions.

And unless you were inside the swarm as a participant; I am thinking micro-Mav robotics solution is needed to observe this; then you could not know the answer to the origin of the cadence command and control if there was one? From a far away observer you would not notice any of this, it would look chaotic, when it very well could be very uniform. Just a thought.

So if this were the case then the swarm shape looks like an ocean wave on a cad cam, so does the wave curl onto itself as it moves like an ocean wave and what determines the motion of the ocean within the swarm for the individual participant. Remember 400 million years of evolution behind the locust would seem that there is more to this than some chaotic mess that we assume we observe?

Thinking out loud, because I do not know the answer to any of these questions. But for the future of swarming systems from a micro-MEMS standpoint, I would like to know as mimicking nature is often the fastest way to success until you find an advantage for your mission that evolution had not consider due to a different mission which it fulfilled in its niche. If that makes sense? So perhaps some more thought is needed on the chaos or order issue with Locust Swarms. Indeed consider all this in 2006.