Spacetime May Have Fractal Properties on a Quantum Scale

(PhysOrg.com) -- Usually, we think of spacetime as being four-dimensional, with three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. However, this Euclidean perspective is just one of many possible multi-dimensional varieties ...

Voltage-driven liquid metal fractals

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that gallium indium (EGaIn), a liquid metal with one of the highest surface tensions, can be induced to spread and form patterns called fractals with the application ...

Atomic fractals in metallic glasses

Metallic glasses are very strong and elastic materials that appear with the naked eye to be identical to stainless steel. But metallic glasses differ from ordinary metals in that they are amorphous, lacking an orderly, crystalline ...

Forecast calls for nanoflowers to help return eyesight

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Oregon researcher Richard Taylor is on a quest to grow flowers that will help people who've lost their sight, such as those suffering from macular degeneration, to see again.

Scientists discover fractal pattern in Scotch tape

(PhysOrg.com) -- Clear cellophane tape – which can be found in almost every home in the industrialized world – may seem quite ordinary, but recent research has shown otherwise. In 2008, scientists discovered that, ...

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Fractal

A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity. Roots of the idea of fractals go back to the 17th century, while mathematically rigorous treatment of fractals can be traced back to functions studied by Karl Weierstrass, Georg Cantor and Felix Hausdorff a century later in studying functions that were continuous but not differentiable; however, the term fractal was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin frāctus meaning "broken" or "fractured." A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion. There are several examples of fractals, which are defined as portraying exact self-similarity, quasi self-similarity, or statistical self-similarity. While fractals are a mathematical construct, they are found in nature, which has led to their inclusion in artwork. They are useful in medicine, soil mechanics, seismology, and technical analysis.

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