CLASSIC CROP CIRCLES


Updated Sunday, 05 November 2006 22:51:46 

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Two shots of the famous first Julia Set formation, The Single Julia. One image shows Stonehenge in the background -- a mandatory shot. The other looks almost straight down at the great crop circle.

I flew over it on the second day of its existence, and had heard only that it was a massive spiral of circles. As we approached and I could just make it out, my first thought was that it was a centipede. But I have a background in computer graphics, so by the time we were directly above, it dawned on me that it represented a Julia set.

I had written an article on fractals for a computer magazine about ten years earlier, and I knew this was a very important development for the crop circle phenomenon. Together with the three-armed Triple Julia Set that appeared later in the summer, the croppie community was inspired to delve deeper into the cutting edge mathematical study of fractals (which they had been introduced to them with the appearance of the Mandelbrot set in 1991).

 


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Peter is having difficulty keeping up with his email. He does read them all and, is very grateful for all comments and criticism.

Peter Sorensen