How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer

We've all heard of 'six degrees of separation', the idea that everyone in the world can be connected in just a few steps. But what if those steps don't just relate to people but also to viruses, neurons, proteins and even to fashion trends? What if this `six degrees of separation' allowed us an insight into the mysteries that lay at the very core of Nature itself?Common thinking had always suggested that the way in which web pages, power grids and people intersected was more or less random. But recently two young physicists independently discovered that fundamental laws govern networks. It's a discovery that may prove as important as Newton's observations of gravity or Darwin's theory of evolution.Supposedly an amusing urban myth built around the idea that any two people on the planet can be connected in a few steps of association, CONNECTED - How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer puts this premise to the test through an ambitious international experiment that unfolds the science behind the popular trivia game `Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon'.Now you can discover for yourself the intricate workings of this major scientific breakthrough, and embrace a new exciting view of the world.Background:The explosion in the new science of networks started with an Australian PhD student Duncan Watts while studying, of all things, crickets, and the mechanism that allows them to chirp in unison. He investigated networks as varied as the actors of Hollywood, the neural pathways of the brain and the US power grid and discovered that they are all 'small worlds' where every actor, neuron, cricket and transformer is only a few 'handshakes' away.Meanwhile a Hungarian physicist, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi coincidentally mapped the World Wide Web and found an underlying law that shapes small-world structures. Whether natural or manmade, vast diverse networks share a common blueprint, a structure that describes their strengths and weaknesses. In the near future network science will fundamentally change how we control epidemics; power failures; fight wars; save endangered species; prevent