Tag Archive for 'Slime mold'

In shaping the Universe, gravity builds a vast cobweb-like structure of filaments tying galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along invisible bridges hundreds of millions of light-years long. This is known as the cosmic web. Image credit: Burchett et al.

Astronomers Use Slime Mold to Reveal Cosmic Web’s Dark Threads

Mar 11, 2020 by News Staff

Physarum polycephalum, a single-cell organism known as slime mold, builds complex web-like filamentary networks in search of food, always finding near-optimal...

Fossil Stemonitis in Kachin amber. Image credit: Rikkinen et al, doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-55622-9.

World’s Oldest Slime Mold Found in Amber

Jan 13, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The fossilized fruiting bodies of a myxomycete from the extant genus Stemonitis preserved in Kachin amber date back some 100 million years (mid-Cretaceous...

Physarum polycephalum on an oak log. Image credit: Mushroom Observer / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Slime Mold Can Solve Exponentially Complicated Problems in Linear Time

Dec 26, 2018 by Sam Sander Effron

Researchers from Lanzhou University in China have shown that the slime mold Physarum polycephalum is able to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, a combinatorial...