New laws, developed by a team of scientists led by Dmitri Krioukov at the University of California, San Diego, explain why networks expand so rapidly and often break. Whether it’s the internet, a social network, or the neural pathways in our brains, these networks grow at an astonishing rate, and often fracture.
Krioukov’s team has developed two laws to explain this behaviour. The first law, “hot gets hotter”, suggests that the more connected a node is, the more connections it will attract. This is similar to the concept of ‘rich get richer’, where well-connected nodes become increasingly popular over time.
The second law, “the fit get richer”, posits that nodes with a higher ‘fitness’ level, a measure of a node’s ability to attract new connections, will gain more links over time. This law explains the unexpected breaks in networks, as ‘fit’ nodes can suddenly stop attracting new links, causing a fracture in the network.
These laws could have significant implications for understanding and predicting the behaviour of a variety of networks, from the internet to the human brain. They could also be used to prevent network failures, which can have catastrophic consequences in many areas of our lives.
Go to source article: http://www.wired.com/2015/08/new-laws-explain-fast-growing-networks-break/