In Greek mythology, a chimera is a three-headed, fire-breathing monster—part lion, part goat, part serpent. In the parlance of nonlinear dynamics, the term “chimera state” refers to a similarly incongruent beast—a partly synchronized, partly incoherent system of coupled oscillators. It’s been shown, in theory at least, that chimera states can exist, but they’ve proved difficult to spot in the real world. Now they’ve made their laboratory debut in a pair of nearly simultaneous experiments—one led by Rajarshi Roy at the University of Maryland, College Park,1 the other by Kenneth Showalter at West Virginia University.2
Oscillators, objects that exhibit cyclic behavior, are commonplace. They include AC circuits, fireflies, and neurons, to name just a few. When several oscillators are coupled, they often synchronize: Fireflies can flash in concert; cardiac pacemaker cells fire in unison, resulting in a regular heartbeat. Indeed, spontaneous synchronization occurs in any number of natural and...
