Thursday, October 25, 2012

Slow Power Law Avalanches Oscillate

Everyone familiar with complex systems are familiar with the fact that "avalanches" occur in a power law distribution -- few large avalances and many small ones. However, until now, it has been assumed that the avalanches themselves were random. Under the conditions described in the linked paper, under certain conditions, in which slow avalanches are created, the frequency of large and small avalanches actually oscillate. Thus, there is a pattern to the distribution of the power law distribution.

More and more, it seems that processes we thought were essentially random are in fact ordered. But the order is complex, not simple. And it is complex order on complex order -- giving the appearance of randomness.

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