Physics and dating: Physicist Richard Ecob has found some interesting similarities between physics systems and dating. Among his conclusions are the following:

He found that "super daters", people who have many short relationships, have a good effect on others' lives.

This is because they break up weak couples, forcing their victims to find better relationships.

And,

The research suggested that multiple daters, those who form many relationships, were less effective at finding the right partner than those who remained in one place and let others come to them.

"If you have a complex network and you stay in one site you see more traffic coming through," he said. "It's a denser network, so there are more possible matches."

Another surprising discovery was that an increased set of preferences made no difference to a single's chance of ending up in a relationship.

Of course like in all such research, the validity of these conclusions is only as good as the validity of the underlying assumptions used in the computer modelling.