The Critical State

But if chaos teaches physicists that the truly simple can nevertheless look complicated, the critical state teaches them that the truly complicated can behave in ways that are remarkably simple.  … The basic organization of any substance poised in the critical state between two phases depends very little on the precise nature of the elements involved.  There is a profound universality at work, which makes it possible to understand literally thousands of utterly different collectives in terms of simple mathematical games that share the same skeletal logic.
… One of the deepest discoveries in physics of the past two decades is that in nonequilibrium systems the critical state often arises on its own.
… It does not seem normal and lawlike for long periods of calm to be suddenly and sporadically shattered by cataclysm, and yet it is.  This is, it seems, the ubiquitous character of the world.
—    Mark Buchanan
From his book: “Ubiquity“
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On This Day In:
2014	Dawn, n.
2013	Ouch!
2012	Just Lookin’ Around
	Still Growing
2011	But Do You Want To?