And by this, I mean really, really big...
This was sent to me by my colleague Christian Reinboth in Germany. Christian explains that this...
was created by some math students in the US. It shows a massive zoom (315 times) into the famous Mandelbrot set. The astonishing thing is this (and I am quoting the filmmakers): You would need a monitor 2^316 times the size of a normal one to view the whole of the first frame by the time you get to the last frame. That's approx 2^176 times the size of the known universe.
Here it is:
Technology
Comments
I am absolutely captivated by the M set. If anything were evidence of "intelligent design", this would be it. I enjoy showing people these beautiful images (I have them on the door to my classroom) and explaining that they weren't designed by an artist - just a relatively simple equation. And the fact that the overall shape keeps reappearing at smaller scales in the center of mandala-like patterns is mindboggling - the equation seems much too simple to result in such complexity.
Posted by: uncle noel | April 28, 2008 9:59 AM
It needs a soundtrack - Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, maybe?
Posted by: T. Bruce McNeely | April 28, 2008 10:29 AM
Pink Floyd? There is only one valid soundtrack for this video.
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Mandelbrot%20Set
Mandelbrot Set by Jonathan Coulton, you can listen free through the link.
Posted by: thadd | April 28, 2008 11:23 AM
Wow. This is way better than reality. At the lowest level, how many decimal places in the coordinates do you need to consider in order to evaluate whether a point is in or out?
Posted by: WFR | April 28, 2008 1:00 PM
Cosmic, man.
But you know, you aren't allowed to show stuff like this unless you bring enough weed for everyone.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 28, 2008 2:17 PM
We may need a little more than weed if we are going to contemplate a computer screen 2^176 times larger than the known universe....
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 28, 2008 2:26 PM
so i know this guy...
Posted by: laurisa | April 28, 2008 2:59 PM
If you zoom far enough you will see the text "We apologize for the inconvenience" :-)
Posted by: Thomas | April 28, 2008 3:58 PM
Love all the bitty-'brots you pass on the way down.
Cool visual effect: after watching those ever-expanding colours for several minutes, now the white comment area seems to be shrinking on me. Bizarre.
My first serious C program was a Mandelbrot generator, which I wrote on my first PC -- a 12MHz 386SX -- c. 1989.
Posted by: Eamon Knight | April 28, 2008 7:04 PM