2020
Heat

About the work

The physicality of a network often forces its links to deviate from a straight line as they struggle to find a path to their destination. The need to quantify these deviations inspired The BarabásiLab’s development of the “network temperature” concept.

 

Team

Heat, by A.-L. Barabási, N. Dehmami, and Y. Liu, for “Isotopy and Energy of Physical Networks,” in Nature Physics volume 17, pages 216–222 (2021)

Just as air temperature captures the randomness of the air’s molecular trajectories in the gas, the temperature of a network describes the degree to which individual links wander in space. A zero-temperature network has only straight links. The links of a “hot network,” by contrast, swerve and curve as they reach their destination.

While these hot networks were intended to exist as data sculptures, many could not yet be printed with the spatial resolution offered by the existing 3-D printing technologies. This is the hot network the BarabásiLab printed successfully. 
Rendering of what happens to networks when the temperature of all its links is increased.
Rendering of what happens to networks when the temperature of all its links is increased.
Projections of three-dimensional cubic lattices, whose temperature is elevated at the center of the network.
While these hot networks were intended to exist as data sculptures, many could not yet be printed with the spatial resolution offered by the existing 3-D printing technologies. This is the hot network the BarabásiLab printed successfully. 
Rendering of what happens to networks when the temperature of all its links is increased.
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