Scientists Study The Art Of Moshing

Scientists love to study the arcane, chaotic and unpredictable, and try to make sense of it.

That’s why they’ve been studying dozens of moshing videos on YouTube to see what they can learn about people who rock out in the pit at rock gigs – and the results were surprisingly familiar.

It seems that people in mosh pits behave exactly the same as particles of gas at equilibrium, such as inside a balloon.

Jesse Silverberg and colleagues at Cornell University in Ithaca studied mosh pits in crowds of 100 to 100,000 people. After removing camera shake from YouTube videos, they used special techniques to measure how moshers move around.

They found that rock fans would begin to move in vortex-like patterns.

To check their findings they were able to simulate moshing inside a computer, which was easily reproduced according to Technology Review.

“These findings offer strong support for the analogy between mosh pits and gases,” said the researchers. “The collective mood is influenced by the combination of loud, fast music (130 dB, 350 beats per minute), synchronized with bright, flashing lights, and frequent intoxication.”

The scientists say it raises interesting new questions. “Why does an inherently non-equilibrium system exhibit equilibrium characteristics?” they ask.