The whole point of free speech is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Consider this...


Chances are, this is the kind of space we live in, people. It's called a Calabi-Yau manifold. I'm going to be gone for a few days. I just know that when I get back you'll all have this whole thing figured out. Stay frosty. See you Tuesday.

p.s. for even more fun with this click here.

5 comments:

Michael Sanborn said...

Somehow it needs a skyblue background to define the negative space.

Michael Sanborn said...

Nope. That doesn't help. I had a medical illustrator friend who could do stuff like this.

Interesting. Lovely.

Bill Fleming said...

Umm, Mike the reason you can't find any "negative space" is because there isn't any.

That's sorta the point of this particular kind of multidimensional topological thingy. Physicists are finding a whole bunch of extra dimensions, but very little (if any) real empty space.

Seems like everywhere you look, (even in the 7th or 10th dimension) all the "empty space" is actually full of "stuff."

Michael Sanborn said...

Si senor.
But the animated gif of the grid patterns to which you link DOES have negative space. Nicely frustrating.

Bill Fleming said...

Oh, okay, now I see what you mean, Mike.

As Brian Green explains, those images on the animated gif are spaced like that only for our convenience in trying to visualize the concept of 10 dimensions.

In actuality, there would be no intervals between the drawings. i.e. there would be one of those little buggers for every single point on every line, not just at the intersections where the lines meet.

Does that help? (...maybe just a little?)