Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

these feats of synchrony occur spontaneously, almost as if nature has an eerie yearning for order.

How exactly do coupled oscillators synchronize themselves, and under what conditions? When is sync impossible and when is it inevitable? What other modes of organization are to be expected when sync breaks down? And what are the practical implications of all that we’re trying to learn?

Sync is both strange and beautiful. It is strange because it seems to defy the laws of physics (though in fact it relies on them, often in curious ways). It is beautiful because

Even our bodies are symphonies of rhythm, kept alive by the relentless, coordinated firing of thousands of pacemaker cells in our hearts.

transient sync

at a deeper level, there is a connection, one that transcends the details of any particular mechanism. That connection is mathematics. All the examples are variations on the same mathematical theme: self-organization, the spontaneous emergence of order out of chaos.

The impressive kind of sync is persistent.

The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite, that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder, greater entropy. Yet all around us we see magnificent structures—galaxies, cells, ecosystems, human beings—that have somehow managed to assemble themselves.

AT THE HEART OF THE UNIVERSE IS a steady, insistent beat: the sound of cycles in sync. It pervades nature at every scale from the nucleus to the cosmos.