Rec | LOOKING FOR FRACTAL PATTERNS ON GOOGLE EARTH

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looking for fractal patterns on google earth

if you start zooming in on a pattern, and the pattern doesn't seem to get more simple as you close in, there's a very good chance you're looking at a fractal shape. my new computer hobby is going on google earth (clean setting - no borders or labels) and zooming into random places to see if i can find these patterns. and they are everywhere. in rivers, mountains, deserts, forests, coastlines and on and on. its genuinely stunning, and a little bit frightening, how the same shapes appear over and over again. the beating heart of iterative processes is plastered all over the globe at every scale. from above, the shape of a forest can look like a leaf, or a neuron, or a blood vessel.
great place to have a zoom is at the bottom of tibet, where theres a sharp cutoff between the icy mountain range and the grassy forests of nepal and bhutan. pic below is of the nile river in southern egypt. happy travels everyone

@eyelid

Mar 25, 2024

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@moonie

this is so cool

Mar 26, 2024

@Usernameusernendjfjfjjc

Fractals 🥹🥹🥹😍

Mar 25, 2024

@schmichael

you might enjoy this video on percolation processes

Mar 25, 2024

@eyelid

schmichael great stuff !!

Mar 27, 2024

@gus

Similarly I have so much fun finding small examples of this in real life. Like seeing some mud/dirt that‘s been eroded to look like the Grand Canyon, and would be the size of the Grand Canyon to something like an ant. But then I can simply step right over it. Humbling and puts things into perspective

Mar 25, 2024

@eyelid

gus thats self-similarity for u babey!

Mar 27, 2024

@eyelid

the reason the shapes appear in so many places (i mean jesus christ but does this river not look like nerves) is because the processes that define their shape share the same core. and when these processes are iterated (repeated again and again) they converge to the same shape, because they are defined by the rules that generate them, rather than what thing these rules are applied to. watch me i am going to maths the shit out of this. holomorphic dynamics here i come GET READY extra freaky is that its not just physical shapes and shit that have these properties. it's also baked into how systems function. the way your eyes react to light, the beating of your heart, the dripping of water from a tap, the rise and fall of populations, plus actually most things u can think of. the whole phenomenon of emergence also comes from iterative processes, so these dynamic systems share similar mathematical properties as these natural shapes do. really cool. gonna cease being a massive nerd now and go and get very drunk.

Mar 25, 2024

@jasminejafari

eyelid woah

Mar 26, 2024

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