Tomorrow’s weather: Cloudy, with a chance of fractals

A fascinating article about fractal geometry applied to weather forecasting. An 80 year-old idea - vindicated by modern data collection and analysis - suggests weather may be much simpler than it seems. What does this imply for the accuracy of future weather forecasting? Will we ever be able to outwit the famed Butterfly Effect? We’ll see…

Learn more at the New Scientist

Beautiful prediction (Image: Kerry Mitchell)

Fractals in Silver City

The Fractal Foundation visited Silver City, NM, for the first time, as part of our ongoing campaign to Leave No Child unfractalled in New Mexico.
Many thanks to Tom Gruzska of the Western New Mexico University Math Department for inviting us down to bring fractals to the students of Silver City. Over the course of three presentations, we taught fractals to undergraduate calculus students, Aldo Leopold High School students, and many elementary school kids as well. Oh yes, lots of parents showed up to for the evening, family fractal night. The kids loved making fractal triangles too, which will be part of the world-record-breaking Fractal Trianglethon.

Happy kids making fractals in Silver City NM.

Fractal Globules in DNA

Researchers have discovered how the DNA is packed into our cells in such a way that the roughly 2 meters of DNA in each cell doesn’t tangle, and is easily accessible when it’s needed to make proteins. And the key is: Fractal Geometry!

‘…Researchers found that the genome has a highly organized structure. Small pieces of DNA fold into globs, and those globs fold into larger globs and so on. The researchers report that this “globule of globules of globules” is fractal, meaning it is organized in such a way that it has the same pattern no matter how far you zoom in. This fractal shape is “super-dense, but has no knots,” ‘

Fractal folding keeps DNA organized in a cell's nucleus, despite the tight pack. Regions of DNA (shown in different colors) are clustered together. Credit: Leonid A. Mirny, Maxim Imakaev