New Mars Forums

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Fractals are groovy

*Don't believe me?

Check it out

They are awesomely beautiful.   

It's called the Julia set.  No explanation why that name.  It's gorgeous. 

And this gem:

Mind bender.  I love it!  Have never seen anything quite like that -- and the colors, wow. 

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

Rxke

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 3,669

Re: Fractals are groovy

You been hiding under a rock, the last 20 years?   Actually, the equation is more than 100 years old; but the graphical representation is obviously much younger, took some fairly decent supercomputer to draw them... (And today we all have computers fast enough to draw them in realtime)

I remember programming my black and white computer with 64kilobytes to draw the Julia set, read about it in a French mag, only half understood what they were saying, so I wrote a program,  took more than 40 hours to get halfway there, heehee. But it was ashtonishing (even in black and white, seeing the swirls being plotted pixel by agonising pixel... Magic)

Fractals, also known as Mandelbrot-sets, are beautiful things, but also have lots of practical sides, most commonly used in graphic representations of non-geometrical stuff. things like trees (how the branch) shorelines etc...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoit_Man … d_fractals

a very simple equation, rendering these infinte complex things, you can zoom in endlessly, and always you will find iterations of the same basic pattern (the black 'apple' shape, most notably)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set has the pseudocode for making your own set, aaah the memories...

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Fractals are groovy

You been hiding under a rock, the last 20 years?   Actually, the equation is more than 100 years old; but the graphical representation is obviously much younger, took some fairly decent supercomputer to draw them... (And today we all have computers fast enough to draw them in realtime)

I remember programming my black and white computer with 64kilobytes to draw the Julia set, read about it in a French mag, only half understood what they were saying, so I wrote a program,  took more than 40 hours to get halfway there, heehee. But it was ashtonishing (even in black and white, seeing the swirls being plotted pixel by agonising pixel... Magic)

Fractals, also known as Mandelbrot-sets, are beautiful things, but also have lots of practical sides, most commonly used in graphic representations of non-geometrical stuff. things like trees (how the branch) shorelines etc...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoit_Man … d_fractals

a very simple equation, rendering these infinte complex things, you can zoom in endlessly, and always you will find iterations of the same basic pattern (the black 'apple' shape, most notably)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set has the pseudocode for making your own set, aaah the memories...

*Yeah, have known about fractals for a while [nyaaaaa    ] and know most other folks have too; just happened across some really terrific stuff on the 'net the other day, thought I'd share a few especially pretty (IMO) images. 

No one's yet posted indepth about fractals here (that I recall and search is a bit shot), so figured it was time.

--Cindy

---

We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)