Why is nature critical?

Series
Stochastics Seminar
Time
Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 3:30pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Matthew Junge – Baruch College – Matthew.Junge@baruch.cuny.eduhttps://www.mathjunge.com/
Organizer
Michael Damron

How is it that a diverse array of natural systems—such as tectonic plates, neurons, star surfaces, and financial markets—exhibit similar power-law signatures? I will discuss Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld's influential theory of self-organized criticality and then describe our solutions to long-standing conjectures about its sandpile model foundations.