5 Brainless Things That Can Solve a Maze

Slime Mold Maze Solvers

• 💡 Slime molds, specifically the species Physarum polycephalum, can solve mazes by optimizing nutrient transport.
• 🧠 Researchers modeled this by observing how tube thickness and nutrient flow rate determined which paths were maintained, effectively finding the most efficient route.
• 🗺️ This slime mold was even used to re-create the Japanese transport network, demonstrating its ability to create an organized and efficient system.

Cellular Maze Navigation

• 🔬 Human cells, like white blood cells or cancer cells, can navigate mazes using chemotaxis to move towards chemical signals.
• 🏆 The "Dicty World Races" showcased genetically engineered cells, including amoebas and human cancer cells, competing to clear mazes, highlighting their natural navigation abilities.
• 🩺 Understanding cell movement is crucial for developing treatments to stop cancers from spreading.

Non-Living Maze Solvers: Milk and Soap

• 💧 A mixture of milk and food dye, when combined with soap, can solve a maze due to the Marangoni effect and surface tension.
• 🧼 Soap, as a surfactant, lowers surface tension, causing the dye blob to move towards areas with higher surface area, which is designed to be the path leading to the exit.
• ⚛️ This demonstrates how fluid mechanics and the laws of physics can guide movement without a brain.

Plasma and Electrical Currents

• ⚡ Plasma, created by running an electric current through a gas in a maze, can find the shortest path due to the principle that electric currents follow the path of least resistance.
• 💡 The charged particles in the plasma react to electric fields, and a feedback loop ensures that only the path of least resistance remains, effectively solving the maze almost instantly.
• 🏙️ This principle was applied to create a roadmap of London on a chip, allowing plasma to show the shortest route between any two locations.

Light Beams as Maze Solvers

• ✨ A beam of light can be coaxed into solving a maze by exploiting its quantum properties, such as its ability to take multiple paths simultaneously.
• 📈 Introducing a small amount of "noise" that destroys quantumness can significantly improve the light's maze-solving speed, suggesting that controlled imperfections can aid navigation.
• 🌿 Researchers speculate this phenomenon could explain the efficiency of photosynthesis, which also involves light interacting with complex cellular structures.