The form of a cloud or the population dynamics of locusts threatening to reach plague proportions -- they are examples of complex systems at the heart of chaos theory. Reducing such systems to mathematics has been the holy grail of chaos theorists for decades. Fractal geometry, pioneered by Benoit Mandelbrot, was a paradigm leap but it has had some shortcomings.

Australian National University mathematician Michael Barnsley has pushed chaos theory to a new level with superfractals theory -- a description of complex systems which is a closer approximation to the real world than is afforded by conventional fractal geometry. The work increases the theory's predictive power and is finding applications in fields ranging from climate modelling, through biology to economics.