Author: Ben Fulcher, Senior Lecturer, School of Physics, University of Sydney

According to the infamous myth, groups of lemmings sometimes run off cliffs to their collective doom. Imagine you are one of these rodents: on a sunny day you join your companions in a joyous climb up a mountain beneath clear skies, traipsing across grass and dirt and rock, glad to be among friends, until suddenly you plunge through the brisk air and all goes black. The edge of the cliff is what scientists call a “critical point”: the spot where the behaviour of a system (such as a group of lemmings) suddenly goes from one type of state (happily running)…