Heavy metal moshers move just like molecules! Physicists reveal music fans in mosh pit follow same 'logic' as 2D gas particles



Behaviour of metalheads in a mosh pit closely resembles particle movement in a disordered 2D gas, study claims

Researchers from Cornell University develop 'mosh pit simulator' to help them study the phenomena

The say their findings could help to predict the ways that crowds behave in emergency situations




The collective behaviour of moshers at heavy metal rock concerts is similar to the way particles move in a disordered 2D gas, new research reveals.

Physicists at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who studied the movements of concert-goers caught up in chaotic-looking mosh pits found they actually follow a certain logic.

They say their insights could help to predict how crowds behave in emergencies, and could lead to more effective evacuation strategies.

Scroll down to try the mosh pit simulator

Like molecules in a disordered 2D gas: Revellers clash in the mosh pit as U.S. heavy metal group Anthrax performs at the Sonisphere rock festival in Knebworth in 2009

Try out the Cornell University teams mosh pit simulator

The Cornell University team's mosh pit simulator: Play around. The buttons above set up interesting initial conditions while the sliders allow you to control the parameters of the model. The keys WASD allow you to apply external forces to active moshers. The graphs, as listed from the left, are a time average of the angular momentum, the current angular momentum, and the speed distribution. (Source: http://mattbierbaum.github.com/moshpits.js/)

'The goal of the project was to figure out how humans behave in extreme social conditions, like those found during riots and protests,' said Jesse Silverberg, study co-author, in a blog for the Huffington Post .

'Over the years, experiments and computer simulations have helped scientists work out the basic rules of pedestrian traffic moving down the street.

'However, we don't know much about the collective behaviour that emerges from panicked crowds - it's not exactly ethical to start a riot for the sake of science.'

Crowds at heavy metal concerts often firm circles called mosh pits where they violently lunge and bounce off one and other with their arms flaying and their legs kicking.

'Often resulting in injuries, the collective mood is influenced by the combination of loud, fast music (130 dB, 350 beats per minute), synchronised with bright, flashing lights, and frequent intoxication,' the study notes.

However, while the movements appear to be chaotic and random, Mr Silverman and his colleagues claim that there is actually a logic which enables them to statistically predict the ways in which moshers move.

Upended at Coachella: Physicists at Cornell University, New York, who studied the movements of concert-goers caught up in mosh pits found they actually follow a certain logic

WHY ANNOYING SONGS WILL JUST NOT GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD

It is a feeling we have all experienced - an irritating song that just will not leave your head.

But despite the widely help opinion that only the most infuriating songs get buried in your head, research has suggested we might actually like the songs that push us close to migraines.

Using songs by artists such as Lady Gaga, scientists proved that songs people know and like frequently become more intrusive than songs people dislike.

Psychologists at Western Washington University found that if a song continues to play in someone's head immediately after listening, it is likely to come back as an intrusive thought in the next 24 hours.

Their findings could explain why some pop songs and TV theme tunes go round in people's heads, despite finding them annoying.

Researchers also found songs are more likely to get stuck in your mind during challenging mental activities.

Inspiration for the study came after Mr Silverberg, a graduate student at Cornell, took his girlfriend to her first heavy metal concert several years ago, where he had a chance to witness the movements of moshers from the outside.

'I didn't want to put her in harm's way, so we stood off to the side,' he told New Scientist . 'I'm usually in the mosh pit, but for the first time I was off to the side and watching. I was amazed at what I saw.'

He told NBC News that as the band played louder and the moshers got more inebriated, he realised there was a ripple-like pattern to the movements caused after one person bumped into another.

'The collision went from one side to the other,' he said, adding it looked as if moshers were following the rules of collective motion.

'I had a hard time focusing on the music for the rest of the evening.'

To study the phenomenon, Mr Silverberg and his colleagues collected their data from mosh pit videos on YouTube featuring crowds of between 100 and 100,000 people.

They corrected for camera shake and distortions in perspective, then used particle image velicometry techniques to measure the collective motion of those involved, The Physics arXiv Blog reported.

After analysing their findings, they discovered that the speed distribution of moshing metalheads bears a remarkable resemblance to the movements of molecules in a 2D gas at equilibrium.

To deepen their understanding of the movements of moshpits, Mr Silverman enlisted the help of fellow grad student Matt Bierbaum to build a computer simulation of a mosh pit with a few basic rules.

Their virtual moshers bounced off each other when they collided, they are able to move independently, and they can follow each other to varying degrees in a behaviour the researchers dubbed 'flocking'.

Finally, the team added a variable amount of statistical noise to their model, which, Mr Bierbaum told New Scientist, is 'to mimic the effects of the inebriants that the participants typically use.'

They found that they could quite accurately reproduce the characteristics of a mosh pit when the self-propulsion and flocking variables were dominated by noise.

On the other hand, when they adjusted the flocking variable to dominate their computer generated moshers' behaviour, they found their simulation mimicked another phenomenon seen at metal concerts known as a circle pit.

The researchers said that although moshers are self-propelled, and the collisions between them dissipative, they move in a similar way to a disordered gas.

'These ﬁndings offer strong support for the analogy between mosh pits and gases,' they concluded in their paper, Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts, published on Cornell's online open-access journal arXiv .

Mr Silverman elaborated in his Huffington Post article: 'Just like moshers bouncing around in a pit, it's near impossible to tell where molecules of air in a room are going to be in the future.

'To deal with this problem, physicists started describing molecular gasses with statistical mechanics over a hundred years ago. As the researchers discovered, mosh pits have the same statistical character, and hence the analogy.'

The team behind the research believe that it could have important implications for understanding how crowds behave when they are panicked.

'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,' Mr Silverberg told New Scientist.

'By going to these heavy-metal concerts, we're able to ethically and safely observe how humans behave in these unusual excited states.'