Introduction
Tokyo is known for the most efficient railway system in the world, carrying over 7 million passengers everyday. The city spent millions of dollars and several years to design a highly reliable railway system. At such a cost, one would expect the system to be well-structured, but Tokyo did not live up to this expectation. A solution? Some oats and mold called Physarum polycephalum. Not only is this “slime mold” brainless, but it is completely unaware of the problem it is trying to solve. How is it so “smart”?
Analysis
Researchers from Britain and Japan came together to perform an experiment to compare this slime mold to the Tokyo railway system. They placed oat flakes (nodes) to represent the major cities surrounding Tokyo. The researchers let the mold free and observed what it would do. Molds have only one goal: find nutrients in order to grow.
One would think that nothing revolutionary will happen, given the characteristics of the mold. At the start, the mold spread equally around each oat flake, duplicating its nuclei and marking its territory. Eventually, after a couple of hours, the mold looked more structured and created noticeable tubes between each oat flake. After a day, the mold formed a network that connected the oat flakes to each other.
Conclusion
This opens up a whole new world of highly-efficient systems – exactly what we need! In fact, a masters’ candidate at the University of Toronto experimented with this new invention, to design the TTC subway network.They concluded that the slime-formed network was 40% less prone to disruptions than our actual subway system. Additionally, biologists say this theory can be used to research how blood vessels grow to support tumors, because the growth of a tumor is similar to how the mold works. Can you think of something else this discovery can be used for?
Sources:
- Slime Mold Grows Network Just Like Tokyo Rail System – https://www.wired.com/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/
- Researchers use ‘virtual slime mould’ to design a TTC subway network less prone to disruption – https://www.utoronto.ca/news/researchers-use-virtual-slime-mould-design-ttc-subway-network-less-prone-disruption
One reply on ““Brainless” slime significantly smarter at building efficient systems than humans?”
This is such a cool topic! I’d be really cool to Biomimicry in the future for other CS-related topics. I wonder if we can learn from some other sort of life form to learn about other programming problems. Maybe theres some bacteria out there that can help us figure out NP-hard problems???