Chia seeds sprouted in trays have experimentally confirmed a mathematical model proposed by computer scientist and polymath Alan Turing decades ago. The model describes how patterns might emerge in nature, such as desert vegetation, leopard spots and zebra stripes. But proving that Turing’s model explains patterns in the real world has been challenging. It could be that the idea is a mathematical just-so story that happens to produce similar shapes in a computer, says Flavio Fenton, professor in the School of Physics. Brendan D'Aquino, a Northeastern University computer science undergraduate student who studied in Fenton's lab in the summer of 2022, described his Turing-based experiment at the recent American Physical Society March meeting. (This story also appeared in LiveScience.)