A group of researchers led by grad student/metalhead Jesse Silverberg took it upon themselves to analyze the physics of mosh pits, pulling videos from YouTube and using software designed to look at particle physics. What they found was astounding–that the statistical distribution of speeds of various moshers matched that of particles moving freely in a gas. “This presented a bit of a mystery,” said Silverberg.
The team took their findings and created an awesome mosh simulator, available for free online, which allows users to manipulate parameters like “soft sphere,” “flock strength,” and random noise–”to mimic the effects of the inebriants that the participants typically use,” says researcher Matthew Bierbaum. And the simulation appears to be accurate: simply by manipulating parameters, the scientists are able to recreate both traditional and “circle”-style pits. When the system is taken to its extremes, the virtual moshers will engage in heretofore unseen behaviors like running freely through the crowd, which raises the question: is this some avant-garde form of moshing real metalheads just haven’t discovered yet?
Beyond sheer “wow” factor, the study may also help in researching how people behave when the chaos is less controlled. “When you have earthquakes or buildings on fire, people tend to panic when they escape. We don’t have a good way of experimentally seeing what’s going on,” said Silverberg. “By going to these heavy-metal concerts, we’re able to ethically and safely observe how humans behave in these unusual excited states.”
Co-author James Sethna agrees. “The fact that human beings are very complex creatures, and yet we can develop a lifeless computer simulation that mimics their behaviour, really tells us that we’re understanding something new about the behaviour of crowds that we didn’t understand before,” he said.
(Photo: Oxxte/Flickr)
Wicked simulator, and well spotted on your side!
I have just one note, however:
"… virtual moshers will engage in heretofore unseen behaviors like running freely through the crowd, which raises the question: is this some avant-garde form of moshing real metalheads just haven’t discovered yet?"
The author doesn't seem to have attended many punk concerts, but this particular observed avant-garde behaviour is quite in agreement with my experience with wild mosh pits and also my understanding of how physical systems with higher noise would behave.
See, around the mosh pit sometimes you'll get some big and sensible guys that don't mind the high-energy environment and volunteer to be a kind of barrier between active moshers and innocent crowd nearby – that's where you would usually find me. At this position one would often need to use a lot of effort to slow down a mosher that has been ejected by the pit at high velocity – not by a coordinated effort by a group of others, not by his own free will (if such a thing exists at all in humans, but that's another debate) but just because of crowd mechanics.
The story sounds familiar? It should, if you're into astronomy – there are these rogue stars that sometimes get ejected from galaxies. A similar process could be one explanation (although it's the more boring one – the other is super-massive black holes)