Describing The Web With Physics 133
Fungii writes: "There is a fascinating article over on physicsweb.com about 'The physics of the Web.' It gets a little technical, but it is a really interesting subject, and is well worth a read." And if you missed it a few months ago, the IBM study describing "the bow tie theory" (and a surprisingly disconnected Web) makes a good companion piece. One odd note is the reseachers' claim that the Web contains "nearly a billion documents," when one search engine alone claims to index more than a third beyond that, but I guess new and duplicate documents will always make such figures suspect.
Re:Intersting, but flawed. (Score:3, Informative)
The interesting thing is that both the web and the physical network follow this power-law structure (or scale-free, as the "Physics Boys" call it).
Oh, don't think it's possible to study the physical structure of the internet? I'd like to introduce you to a new and powerful tool called traceroute [yes, that was sarcasm]. BTW, you can buy maps of the internet [thinkgeek.com] from ThinkGeek [www.thinkgeek], in case traceroute is too much for you.
How the hell did that guy get modded up, anyway?