UQ researchers break the law -- of physics

[n2doc]

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two UQ Science researchers have proved two famous physical laws that have been widely used for the past 25 years do not always work.

Dr Tony Roberts and PhD student Christophe P. Haynes, from the School of Maths and Physics, showed the fractal-Einstein and Alexander-Orbach laws can fail in some instances, and have derived a new law to replace them.
Dr Roberts said this new discovery had implications for predicting material properties; how disease spreads through society; mapping how wild animals forage for food; and improving the internet.
“We demonstrated unequivocally that two 'exact' foundational laws of fractal science, which have been cited over 2000 times in the scientific literature, can fail for a class of fractals,” he said.
“These are the first definitive counter examples to these laws.
more:

http://www.physorg.com/news166077673.html

[BlooInBloo]

1. Heh - as usual, it was the grad student who did the work...

""The history of it was that my PhD student had been working on the theory of some networks when he came to me in October last year with calculations which didn't obey this law."

Nice to see that he got his share of the credit for it.

[n2doc]

2. Same as it ever was n/t

[Orsino]

3. Hey! Alexander-Orbach!

Suck it!

[phantom power]

4. nice

He's right, their work should have implications in a huge number of problems.