The characterization of the galaxy clustering properties in the universe is one of the most interesting and controversial issues in modern cosmology. Here we present the results of the analysis of the recently available three-dimensional catalogues of galaxies, performed with the tools of modern...

Networks representing social systems display specific features that put them apart from biological and technological ones. In particular, the number of links attached to a node is positively correlated to that of its nearest neighbours. We develop a model that reproduces this feature, starting...

Gravitational clustering of a random distribution of point masses is dominated by the effective short-range interactions due to large-scale isotropy. We introduce a one-dimensional cellular automaton to reproduce this effect in the most schematic way: at each time particles move towards their...

Ideas of Statistical Physics are very relevant for cosmic structures especially considering that the field is undergoing a period of exceptional development with many new data appearing on a monthly basis. In the past years we have focused mostly on galaxy distributions and their statistical...

We study analytically and numerically the critical behavior at the depinning transition and the stretched exponential relaxation in the pinned region of a charge density wave (CDW) under the influence of an applied field. The original model of an elastic string pinned by random sinusoidal...

We summarize a very recent, exhaustive review (Coleman and Pietronero, Phys. Rep. 213 (1992) 311), which also presents some very exciting new analysis. In that review (and here), we reconsider the experimental data concerning the large scale structure of the universe utilizing the theoretical...

The distribution of points corresponding to the angular projection of a fractal is shown to become homogeneous for relatively large angels. In addition the corresponding correlation function w(θ) depends strongly on the angular half-width of the considered sample. These results show that,...

Self-gravitating systems have acquired growing interest in statistical mechanics, due to the peculiarities of the 1/r potential. Indeed, the usual approach of statistical mechanics cannot be applied to a system of many point particles interacting with the Newtonian potential, because of (i) the...

In the debate about galaxy correlation there are different questions which can be addressed separately: Which are the statistical methods able to properly detect scale invariance and describe, in general, the properties of irregular and regular distributions? Which are the implications for...