Fractals

R

random

Veteran XX
orbital's Google Video threads just reminded me of this pretty cool (old) documentary on Fractals, which a bunch of you might not have seen

Documentary
Arthur C. Clarke's - The Colors of Infinity (iMDB)
Arthur_Clarke_-_Fractals_-_The_Colors_of_Infinity_divx.avi - Google Video


Misc. Vids
Neat Fractal animation


Mandelbrot Fractal zoomed to the size of the Universe


Animated Mandelbrot


Another Animated Mandelbrot



Galleries
HUGE Fractal Gallery
Another Gallery
Flame Fractals

etc
Now for some obligatory fractal pictures.

Buddhabrot-deep.jpg


tammikuu-1.jpg


fractal_art.jpg


fractal-Xmas.jpg


fractal31-alaya.jpg


Swiss%20Fractal.jpg


403146000_e85b7044d5_o.jpg



If fractals don't make you want to relearn math, nothing will.
 
For anyone who doesn't know what a Fractal is.
It's basically just a math equation like x = x^2 + 1, only repeated billions of times (infinite actually) then drawn by a computer. Usually any number above 1 (that tends to infinity) is made black, and all numbers (an infinite amount) between 1 and 0 are given their own colors, depending on what set of numbers they belong to (any color can be used for a certain set, but each set has their own unique color).

The best part, is that with a simple equation like z = z^2 + c, you can draw the exact same image on any computer, and zoom until your computer explodes. So they're not just some magical pictures some computer graphics nerd on PCP made.

Fractals (their sets) have always existed, it's only within the last 30 years that the technology has existed to be able to draw them outside mathematicians heads.

The Mandelbrot the size of the Universe video shows that there's still an infinite amount of unseen image if you expanded the fractal until it was as big as the universe.
 
no thread w/ 3 almost consecutive shok posts deserves to be off the front page

i should probably make uneducated statements about science to keep it here
 
some of em look eerily organic/biological...

very cool, though. vast majority of them are background worthy
Spoiler
 
hk_wintermute said:
lol good choice of soundtrack in that documentary
anyways i always wondered how would these look if we could somehow use a different base system to represent the values
would they be twisted into exotic shapes?
Click to expand...
i think numbers are the same regardless of base

i.e 18d is 12h is 22o is 10010b
 
random said:
The Mandelbrot the size of the Universe video shows that there's still an infinite amount of unseen image if you expanded the fractal until it was as big as the universe.
Click to expand...

So I don't really know that much about fractals, but this seems like the least interesting aspect in a way. It's just a property of assigning colors to the continuum (plane in this case), since you'd then get this "infinite resolution". Hell it would even work if you just worked with the rationals in [0,1]X[0,1] (I think you study math and understand what I mean...correct me if I'm wrong) and then you could even have the advantage of working with a countable set. But is the big point that the functions are defined recursively somehow? Or just that by assigning colors in a certain way it gives a cool design? I've honestly (out of ignorance) just never understood why people like them so much other than for aesthetic purposes.
 
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