Active fluids navigate networks by solving sudoku-like problems
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Have you ever wondered how blood flows through the intricate vascular network that spans your entire body? Conservation of fluid volume ensures that the sum of flows into each node of this network is equal to the outgoing flows. So an increase in flow at one node can affect the whole network, setting up complex relationships between flows at different points in the vasculature1. For a normal fluid (even a complex one, such as blood), these relationships result in the emergence of patterns. So, what happens in the case of a self-propelled — or ‘active’ — fluid? Writing in Nature Physics, Jorge et al.2 analysed active fluids flowing through large-scale networks and found a set of rules that fully predict the patterns they observed.
Read the paper: Active hydraulics laws from frustration principles
