This article is so sensationalist I can't get past the beginning. It's also written by someone with little or not physics understanding, which makes it immediately suspicious.
For example, gems like:
a compound in which electrons obey the spooky laws of quantum physics, and flow in perfect synchrony, without friction
Are the laws of quantum physics still spooky? IANAP, but I was under the impression the novelty has worn off and quantum behavior is business as usual these days.
Quantum physics is business as usual, but it is still counter-intuitive. Though I don't think physicists would call it spooky. Leonard Susskind (Stanford) explains why very well in the beginning of this lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Eeuqh9QfNI (Approximately from zero to six minutes)
BTW, he's a very good lecturer. If you are interested, you should try watching some more of these videos.
from leaf patterns to stock market fluctuations to the frequency of earthquakes — suggests some sort of common underlying laws, but these remain speculative.
Thats misleading, just because same type of fractal exists does not mean that there is an underlying "universal" law which is followed by stock market as well as atoms in a semiconductor.
The sentence gives an idea as if stock market can be predicted [horror] or follows similar law, which is clearly not the case.
E.g. Benford's law is observed in many diverse domains, but this does not means that knowledge learnt in one domain can be used for learning in another domains. i.e. just because voter counts in Iranian election and first digit of the prices of products at Walmart have same distribution does not implies that one can be used to predict other quantity.
The interesting point of that paper is that, it goes against our understanding of fluids, we assume the spatial distribution of the oxygen atoms should be random due to Brownian motion, yet there appears some kind of fractal pattern in it and that it is related to the temperature of loss of superconductivity.
edit: I have access to the paper from Cornell university library, I read it, nothing is mentioned about stock markets, its pure speculation by the journalist, just to end the article on some philosophical note.
edit 2: I am sure variation in Stock Market is NOT a fractal! The variation in stock market is Scale Free, [which isn't exactly same as being a fractal]. The journalist seems to be confused between the two terms
As far as I can tell, nothing in the article has the physicists claiming that their results require new universal physical laws (and I suspect they would strongly deny they claimed any such thing). The headline seems to be tacked on to gather traffic.
Very much a linkbait title, but still interesting in what they found. (Not how they presented it.) Fractal math has only really been around since the 80s, there are probably loads of uses it hasn't been put to use for yet. And I'm reminded to read my book on the math. The seeming-randomness however isn't that surprising considering you can generate the Sierpinski Triangle with the random Chaos Game.
Off to the side it seems like the title would be saying analogously that the lattice structure of other non-fundamental units 'interferes' with the lower-order particles, rather than just being a consequence of the underlying laws. It would be very surprising indeed if a higher set of laws or a different level of reality was at work here. (A nice post related to the topic: http://lesswrong.com/lw/on/reductionism/ )
This reminds me of the kinds of things Stephen Wolfram talks about ("A New Kind of Science"). Here we have fractal structure somehow influencing the superconductivity in materials, and the article says it appears that we need new physical laws to explain it. Maybe theoretical computer science will have an explanation for it. There is already known to be a link between thermodynamic entropy and information; maybe there are many more links between (supposedly) theoretical computer science constructs and actual physical events.
(Replying to myself because my post is too old to edit.)
I see I've been upvoted and then downvoted again. I've read comments on HN that were critical of Stephen Wolfram (either calling him a self promoter or that his work is derivative of well-known CS theory). Is this the reason for the back and forth voting?
Personally I'm keeping an open mind about Wolfram, but allow me to point out that any of the following could be true:
1. That Wolfram is a crank and the connection between fractals and superconduction is equally bogus (or at least does not require "a new physical law" to explain).
2. Otherwise if Wolfram is right about the significance of universal computation in physical laws, this may be a manifestation of the kind of emergent property you might expect to find.
3. There could be no relation there.
All I'm saying is that I'm slightly more inclined to believe either #1 or #2 more than #3.
Wolfram's a volatile topic not because his ideas are considered intrinsically wrong, but for some combination of the following: 1. He rather insultingly takes about an order of magnitude more credit than he should; his share is not zero, but it is not commensurate with the amount he took and 2. For all the wonderful ideas in "A New Kind of Science", it's pretty darned short on testable predictions or useful explanations, where by useful I literally mean "suitable for some use". And I mean any use, including scientific or even just as a framework for thinking about things.
The link between fractals and superconductivity is interesting and tantalizing, but the credit should mostly go to the people working on fractal theory and the people working on superconductivity; a lot of us perceive a mention of Wolfram as wedging a name into the discussion that really shouldn't be there.
I know you're joking, but there's a general principle at work here. Suppose you make a prediction (e.g. "There will be a great cataclysm in 2010!") that later turns out to have been correct in some way (e.g. an earthquake hits Haiti). Your prediction was only useful to the extent that it could have helped someone anticipate the Haiti earthquake. A sufficiently vague statement doesn't tell people anything, even if it turns out to have been technically correct.
Bringing it back on topic: if New Age guys talk about fractal crystal handwavium, and later scientists find some genuine science involving fractals and crystals, that doesn't mean the New Age hippies predicted it. A good prediction is a specific prediction. You could call this the anti-Nostradamus principle, but really it's just a generalization of the idea that a theory ought to be falsifiable.
Sorry to stay a bit off-topic, but if you haven't watched Penn and Teller's Bullshit show - they bust these type of "predictions" all the time. And usually, it's pretty funny.
Although they probably don't think of each other as "hackers," they very much are in my opinion.
IANAQP and I haven't read the paper, but I've read the article, and the logical interpretation of the article is that increasing the physical scale of the oxygen atom position fractal would increase the superconductive temperature.
OK, now I wonder: Any connection between this and the earlier piece linked to on HN about "God's Number" and Rubik Cube solved in 20 moves? Probably not, but I still must ask.
For example, gems like:
a compound in which electrons obey the spooky laws of quantum physics, and flow in perfect synchrony, without friction
immediately destroy the author's credibility.
Has Wired hired some Daily Mail writers?