Thirty years of surprises about collective motion

Sorbonne Université, CNRS – Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matière Condensée – 75005 Paris, France

Abstract

Why do large groups of starlings perform their fascinating murmurations over our cities before sunset? This question is best left to zoologists or poets. Understanding how they do it, however, brought up surprisingly rich physics and has led to many interesting developments over the last thirty years.