2001/07/09 by D. Sornette, Didier Sornette · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Earthquake Detection and Analysis #Marine and environmental studies #cond-mat.stat-mech #earthquake and tectonic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.022581999
published as Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 99 SUPP1:2522-2529 (2002) · Latex document of 22 pages including 6 ps figures, in press in PNAS
arxiv created 2001/07/09 · openalex publication_date 2002/02/19 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose that catastrophic events are "outliers" with statistically different properties than the rest of the population and result from mechanisms involving amplifying critical cascades. We describe a unifying approach for modeling and predicting these catastrophic events or "ruptures," that is, sudden transitions from a quiescent state to a crisis. Such ruptures involve interactions between structures at many different scales. Applications and the potential for prediction are discussed in relation to the rupture of composite materials, great earthquakes, turbulence, and abrupt changes of weather regimes, financial crashes, and human parturition (birth). Future improvements will involve combining ideas and tools from statistical physics and artificial/computational intelligence, to identify and classify possible universal structures that occur at different scales, and to develop application-specific methodologies to use these structures for prediction of the "crises" known to arise in each application of interest. We live on a planet and in a society with intermittent dynamics rather than a state of equilibrium, and so there is a growing and urgent need to sensitize students and citizens to the importance and impacts of ruptures in their multiple forms.