Study reveals mysterious equality with which grains pack it inAt the moment they come together, the

Study reveals mysterious equality with which grains pack it inAt the moment they come together, the individual grains in materials like sand and snow appear to have exactly the same probability of combining into any one of their many billions of possible arrangements, researchers have shown.The finding, by an international team of academics at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Brandeis University in the US, appears to confirm a decades-old mathematical theory which has never been proven, but provides the basis for better understanding granular materials - one of the most industrially significant classes of material on the planet.A granular material is anything that comprises solid particles that can be seen individually with the naked eye. Examples include sand, gravel, snow, coal, coffee, and rice.If correct, the theory demonstrated in the new study points to a fact of remarkable - and rather mysterious - mathematical symmetry. It means, for example, that every single possible arrangement of the grains of sand within a sand dune is exactly as probable as any another.Read more. -- source link

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