Extreme events that change global society have been characterized as black swans. The frequency-size distributions of many natural phenomena are often well approximated by power-law (fractal) distributions. An important question is whether the probability of extreme events can be estimated by extrapolating the power-law distributions. Events that exceed these extrapolations have been characterized as dragon-kings. In this paper we consider extreme events for earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, landslides and floods. We also consider the extreme event behavior of three models that exhibit self-organized criticality (SOC): the slider-block, forest-fire, and sand-pile models. Since extrapolations using power-laws are widely used in probabilistic hazard assessment, the occurrence of dragon-king events have important practical implications.

Borrowing techniques from cosmology, I compute the power spectrum of quantum fluctuations in (2+1)-dimensional causal dynamical triangulations, a promising discrete path integral approach to quantum gravity. The results agree with those of canonical quantization to a high degree of precision, providing strong evidence for the equivalence of the two approaches and for the validity of the discrete method.

RW Rechtswissenschaft , Seite 92 - 98