

Stanford researchers solve a mystery of dancing droplets - trueduke
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/march/dancing-droplets-prakash-031115.html

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ankurpatel
This was shown in a Ted talk by Martin Hanczyc
[http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_lif...](http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_life_and_not_life?language=en)

It shows that there is no fine line between life and non life and life is more
like a spectrum with complex life on one side and a simple life-less item like
a rock on the other side.

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beambot
This (derivative) article has some cool animated GIFs that show the effect in
action: [http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/04/dancing-
droplets/](http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/04/dancing-droplets/)

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oakwhiz
Reminds me of SmoothLife, a variation on Conway's Game of Life:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJe9H6qS82I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJe9H6qS82I)

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mirekrusin
Give them 3rd dimension (ie. water tank), make droplet that can grow and
divide and maybe you've got origins of life.

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tectec
But then you would lose the evaporation that is needed for this phenomenon to
occur.

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deckar01
Evaporation could be replaced by any type diffusion in this system. I imagine
a similar process could arise out of difference in salt concentration.

Edit: Updated to clarify the relationship between evaporation and diffusion.

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acadien
It is a phase transition, it takes energy to evaporate because of the change
in entropy/volume (from Clausius Clapeyron).

