fractals

This Trippy Music Video Is Made of 3D Fractals

What you’re watching isn’t organic, but a computer-generated visualization of complex mathematics. It’s a three-dimensional fractal. The clip is a new music video for the song “Eternal Recurrence” by electronic music group Birds of Paradise, created by Dutch fractal artist Julius Horsthuis. Producing the visuals to accompany the soundscape required rendering mathematical formulas in the…

This Captivating Sci-Fi Short Film Was Randomly Generated By a Computer

We wouldn’t blame you for thinking that Julius Horsthuis spent weeks designing and animating his sci-fi short, Fraktaal, using 3D software. But as the artist reveals, “It so happens that I’m a lazy animator.” So he instead relied on complex mathematical fractal patterns to automatically generate the alien worlds and cities visited in his film.…

The Never-Ending Descent Into This Infinite Fractal City Will Melt Your Brain

In Julius Horsthuis’ short film Recurrence, he takes the audience on a slow descent into a sprawling metropolis he’s created. But as you get closer and closer to the city, and try to make out details like houses and skyscrapers, you start to realize that those tiny details only reveal more of the same, and that…

Paintings Reveal Signs of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in Famous Artists

Researchers from the University of Liverpool have shown that it’s possible to detect neurodegenerative disorders in famous artists by analyzing subtle changes in their brush strokes over time. The technique could eventually be used to flag Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in artists before they’re diagnosed. A new study published in Neuropsychology shows that a mathematical technique…

This Fractal Generator Is More Beautiful Than the Hypnotic Patterns it Creates

Designer Love Hultén is probably best known for his Pixel Vision, a tiny portable gaming machine made of wood that’s reminiscent of the folding Game Boy Advance. His latest creation doesn’t play games, but it does generate mesmerizing fractals guaranteed to burn hours of time. Unlike the Pixel Vision, the new Echo Observatory isn’t available…

Fractal Analysis Proves People Hate the Suburbs 

A new fractal analysis of London’s dense network of streets and intersections reveals that a green belt meant to encourage migration to the suburbs had the opposite effect. The city has just became denser. People really seem to love urban living, especially in a thriving city like London. The work could shed light on how…

Fractals Make this Simple Nine Piece Puzzle a Nightmare to Solve

The complexity of a puzzle is usually dependent on how many tiny pieces are crammed inside its box. But by introducing mathematical fractals into the design, this plain nine-piece puzzle by Oscar van Deventer looks like a nightmare to solve. Deventer’s Fractal Jigsaw, available from his website for just shy of $55, is made all…

Pretty Fractal Patterns Pop Up in Maine’s Tidal Ponds

There are multiple examples of fractal patterns in nature, from peacock feathers, snowflakes, and leaves, to cloud formations and coastlines. A group of graduate students have spotted similar fractal geometries in the ponds that form at low tide on a tidal flat in Maine. Geometric patterns are considered fractal when they repeat or look the…

Luminous Fruits & Veggies, by Radu Zaciu

Photographer Radu Zaciu hollowed out ordinary fruits and vegetables and replaced their insides with light bulbs. His photo series, “The Light Inside,” captures what these everyday edibles look like with their new, luminous cores, revealing the structural subtleties in their pulp, their skin, their leaves, and their fractal florets. All images featured by kind permission…

Here’s How Fictional Dust Explains Radio Static

Cantor’s Dust is a famous fractal, a basic pattern that repeats itself over and over. It’s a pretty pattern, but it didn’t seem very useful at the time it was invented. Years later, it was invoked again at the dawn of chaos theory to explain an odd phenomenon in broadcasting. The Cantor Set The Cantor…

Want To Make A Fractal By Accident? Play The Chaos Game

A simple game with a die, a triangle, and a hell of a lot of patience, can help you to draw a famous fractal. Get out a pencil and clear your schedule. (Or get out a computer and clear less of your schedule.) We’ll show you how to draw a fractal by accident. The Chaos…

The Forgotten History Of CGI

The roots of CGI lie in the first mechanical aids to drawing and painting. The earliest of these were developed to help solve a problem every artist has found to be sticky: perspective. Before the introduction of geometric perspective, the realistic depiction of nature was not one of the purposes of art. Instead, artists chose…

What Are Fractals, And Why Should I Care?

Fractal geometry is a field of math born in the 1970s and mainly developed by Benoit Mandelbrot. If you’ve already heard of fractals, you’ve probably seen the picture above. It’s called the Mandelbrot Set and is an example of a fractal shape. This article originally appeared on George Dallas’s blog, which you should absolutely go…

This Noir Cartoon Is the Best Explanation of Fractals You’ll Ever See

Math is way more fun when it’s lent some narrative, some purpose—and we’ve never seen a better example than this stunning noir cartoon which explains fractals. You have to watch it. Starring a private eye called Manny Brot, it’s a brooding tale which kicks off with a bump on the head, a mysterious femme fatale…

This Week in Space

It’s time for weekly space-links of astronomy and planetary science stories that we didn’t cover on Space this week. New mineral Kuratite confirmed in a 1979 meteorite The fluid dynamics of a supernova type II core collapse is gorgeous. Anniversary of the first test flight for the Avro Arrow, Canada’s big hope and crushing disappointment…

What kind of fantastical mirror world is this? We usually see self-replicating fractal patterns in 2-dimensions, but they can also be expressed in 3-dimensions as well, namely via Mandelbox and Mandelbulb sets. This otherworldly 3D fractal pattern was created by mathematician Jos Leys. This image is republished here with permission. [h/t APOD]

IBM’s Fractalizer Turns Any Tumblr Into a Trippy Fractal

IBM’s engineers must have been at a loose end, because they’ve just launched a new site called the IBMblr Fractalizer, which takes any Tumblr and spits it out as a series of fractals. It’s part of a small celebration by IBM of Benoit Mandelbrot, who discovered back in 1978 that nature’s repetitive and complex patterns…

A touching short film about Mandelbrot and how he discovered fractals

Back in 2010 — a mere 19 days before his death — Benoît Mandelbrot gave a candid and moving interview describing his life’s work and how he came to devise fractal geometry, the notion that the much of the natural world is organized according to elegant and predictable mathematical principles. Mandelbrot is best known for…

Exploring Fractals with Dragons and Dungeons

In her two latest videos, maths-maven Vi Hart shows us how to draw fractals freehand, creating Koch curves, dragon curves, and eventually THREE DIMENSIONAL DUNGEONS – all with a little clever doodling. It’s captivating, to say the least. Episode one is up top, episode two down below. Unfamiliar with Vi Hart? What are you even…

Incredible Photographs of Fractals Found in the Natural World

Fractals aren’t just something you learn about in math class. They are also a gorgeous part of the natural world. Here are some of the most stunning examples of these repeating patterns that look the same no matter how far you zoom in or out. https://gizmodo.com/a-symmetrical-fractal-pattern-found-in-nature-5901294 Romanesco Broccoli or Roman Cauliflower (via kcocco, Wikimedia Commons/Richard…