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.

via UQ researchers break the law – of physics – UQ News Online – The University of Queensland.