"Fractal Cosmology" entry in Wikipedia
rlolders...@amherst.edu
Wikipedia. Better late than never. You might want to take a look since
it may be an important paradigm for the 21st century.
In a related development, Pietronero (paper in preparation, personal
communication) has alerted me to the fact that the latest SDSS data
release provides compelling evidence for fractal clustering to the
limits of the survey, and continuing inconsistency with the assumption
of cosmological homogeneity.
These are interesting times for cosmology.
Nicolaas Vroom
news:mt2.0-18346...@hercules.herts.ac.uk...
> Recently an entry on the subject of "Fractal Cosmology" was added to
> Wikipedia. Better late than never.
Is this really such a breakthrough ?
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_cosmology
we read:
"In a wide variety of places, in fact almost anywhere they
look in the universe, people studying the heavens are
finding fractals or fractal-like structures."
Beside that text there is a picture titled
"A galaxy of galaxies"
which resembles our Milky Way galaxy
but clearly which is not.
IMO you can not describe the Universe or any Galaxy by a
MandelBrot Set.
So what is the point ?
>You might want to take a look since
> it may be an important paradigm for the 21st century.
>
Snip
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmology
there is no link to fractal cosmology.
I do not think there should.
> Knecht
> www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Nicolaas Vroom
http://users.pandora.be/nicvroom/
Robert Oldershaw
wrote:
>
> Beside that text there is a picture titled
> "A galaxy of galaxies"
> which resembles our Milky Way galaxy
> but clearly which is not.
The graphic you mention shows one of the beautiful and thought-provoking
images from deep within the M-set. It is *not* meant to directly
represent any actual physical object found in nature. The author of the
Wikipedia addition probably chose it for aesthetic reasons and for a
hint of the diversity, complexity and order that can be created by
recursively iterating a very simple algorithm.
> IMO you can not describe the Universe or any Galaxy by a
> Mandelbrot Set.
> So what is the point ?
There are many different fractal sets, or nonlinear dynamical system
equations, that generate fractals, probably an infinite number of them.
Why should we fixate on the M-set? True, it is one of the most
remarkable sets yet found and put into visual form, but it is hardly all
there is to the general areas of fractals. Last Friday I came across an
NLDS equation that, when iterated, generates a set that looks virtually
indistinguishable from a photo of a sand dollar - an amazing likeness
with unique morphological matches! Study Peitgen's Chaos and Fractals
and you may attain a better understanding of the potential of fractal
geometry and fractal modeling.
> At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmology
> there is no link to fractal cosmology.
> I do not think there should.
Science allows people to think freely and encourages them not to be
bullied by peer pressure or authority. You are free to reject the
fractal paradigm, but I would hope you do so from a position of
knowledge, rather than a position of a lack of knowledge. In the latter
case, one is often inclined to make decisions based on emotional thought
rather than rational thought.
Knecht
[Mod. note: as this thread seems to have drifted even further away
from astrophysics, perhaps it should terminate or move away from the
newsgroup at this point. -- mjh]