What Do a Jellyfish, a Cat, a Snake, and an Astronaut Have in Common? Math.

The contortions of a falling cat and a sidewinding snake might not appear to have much in common, but a team of researchers led by Caltech's Peter Schröder, Shaler Arthur Hanisch Professor of Computer Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics, say they have discovered a single algorithm that describes both kinds of motion and the motions of many other animals that get around simply by changing shape.

A paper describing their work appears in the August issue of ACM Transactions on Graphics and is being presented at this year's SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) conference, which is being held August 6–10 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. [Caltech story]