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Big Numbers / 7 months ago
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I enjoy anything that can give meaning to really large numbers. For example, the fractal program I recently started has generated the following image:
If we take this image to be roughly six inches across (an idea easier to accept if you click and view the enlarged version), and try to describe the size of the entire fractal at that scale, it turns out to be so large that if you start with some object whose length is the diameter of the observable universe, it would take ten million of these objects for every possible chess position (the Wikipedia puts the number of chess positions at approximately 1050) laid end to end to span it.
And I only just started a couple weeks ago.
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Do you suppose computer nerds ever take drugs before navigating mandelbrot in order to have a higher level experience?
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Doped Up Mandelnauts would be a great name for a rock band.
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Have you finished spanning that fractal? I have a few extra observable universes if you run out. :P There is a video that starts with an image of the standard mandelbrot zoomed slightly on the 'neck'. It gives the dimensions of the image if printed at 72 ppi. It then zooms in smoothly for a while, drifting toward interesting features. It ends with "The original image would now eclipse the orbit of Jupiter." :)
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I had gotten a little farther than this before I decided the program needed some restructuring to allow more flexibility. Unfortunately the environment I was running it in is so complex (probably my fault) that I can't do much while I'm testing the new stuff. But if I get a chance, hopefully in the next week or so I'll have a couple dozen PCs churning through numbers again. I'm also hoping to make a CUDA implementation.
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Regarding the Jupiter comment, I was pretty amazed at how quickly I was able to get to absurdly ridiculous scales (which is the point of this particular post). Although, Jupiter's orbit is pretty big for zooming in on the neck. There are some great images in there, but the iterations get really high really fast. Most of the deep zoom videos I've seen go off around the fringes somewhere.
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