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They should really stop linking things to "phase transitions". This is most likely something that follows the Tracy Widom distribution, that has popped up in ma
by d--b 10y ago
They should really stop linking things to "phase transitions". This is most likely something that follows the Tracy Widom distribution, that has popped up in many areas of maths and physics. Linking this to phase transitions is like saying: "weather predictions linked to the physics of a dice being rolled"
- sn9 10y agoWell here's Quanta's piece on the Tracy-Widom distrbution from a few years ago: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20141015-at-the-far-ends-of-a-new-universal-law/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20141015-at-the-far-ends-of-a... More people will have heard of phase transitions than T-W and it's certainly not inaccurate while also using somewhat familiar analogies; so I think your criticism doesn't make much sense for a popular science article.
- macawfish 10y agoI disagree, I love Quanta magazine precisely because of this kind of story telling. And aside from that, these researchers are developing a kind of statistical mechanics of "active matter". Why shouldn't such a theory involve "phase transitions"?