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Monday, Nov. 18, 2024

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Complex Numbers

by Robert Waltz

Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #1196512

Not for the faint of art.

Complex Numbers

A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.

The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.

Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.

Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.

http://www.ddewey.net/mandelbrot/

Signature for Honorable Mentions in 2018 Quill Awards

A signature for exclusive use of winners at the 2019 Quill Awards

Signature for those who have won a Quill Award at the 2020 Quill Awards

Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

tj-turkey-jobble-jobble-hard-J

about 13 hours ago
In response to "Revisited: "A Frank Discussion""

I became disgruntled with meat sold in local grocery stores; half the weight is water, the taste is bland, and it's "use by" date is usually one day away. I found a small town butcher/locker plant that sells locally raised meats and buy in bulk so it's actually fresher, cheaper, and better tasting. Recently, I decided to try my hand at making our own sausage as well. It's a bit of work, but I think it's worth the trouble.

1 Like

Turkey DrumStik

a day ago
In response to "Barley There"

And approximately 15 seconds later, someone's going to screech about genetically engineered crops.

That would be me...screeching for more genetically engineered crops.

Write_Mikey_Write!

Nov 14, 2024 at 2:04pm
In response to "Global Domination"

A little girl wearing a Hello Kitty shirt in Middle-of-Nowhere, Siberia will certainly make you wonder how it got there. My grandson has a souvenir t-shirt with a Terex 33-19 "Titan" on it. When it was built in 1973, the Titan was the largest, highest payload capacity truck ever built, a title it held for 25 years. The thing is, the truck on that t-shirt is on display in Sparwood, BC, Canada - over 1000 miles from here, and his mom got the shirt at a local thrift store. Makes me wonder.

Oh, yeah - I thought 'Schrödinger's Hello Kitty' was funny, too.

1 Like

Adherennium Plotting something

Nov 14, 2024 at 12:10pm
In response to "Global Domination"

For whatever warped reason, 'Schrödinger's Hello Kitty' has tickled my funny bone.

3 Like

Brandiwyn🎶

Nov 12, 2024 at 10:50am
In response to "Blond Man's Bluff"

That's interesting about the two spellings of blonde. I always thought blonde referred to the person and blond referred to the hair. But I never bothered to look it up, So you've catered to my lazy today.

3 Like

Kåre เลียม Enga

Nov 9, 2024 at 1:02pm
In response to "It Was a Dark and Starry Night"

Ah... but why did he see those swirls when many of us don't? A totally different discussion... out of thin air... which is a frozen fog today when I gaze out the window.

Humans have great skills of observation; some of us extraordinary skills. Is The Scream depictive or evocative? 😱

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 9, 2024 at 11:04am
In response to "It Was a Dark and Starry Night"

Frankly, I'm more surprised to see reasonably good reporting from CNN. I'd given up on their ability to rein in their tendency toward loaded speech.

2 Like

JayNaNoOhNo

Nov 8, 2024 at 12:00pm
In response to "Bungalow Bash"

For the love of God, what did I just read? That is by far the worst use case of a bungalow I've ever seen, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of front porches—and the size of bungalows.

Was this his point? Nope, I know what his point was. For a guy so worried about presentation, he certainly undercut his own arguement.

1 Like

Turkey DrumStik

Nov 8, 2024 at 9:47am
In response to "Bungalow Bash"

"People don't change their minds on the internet. They usually do that in books, battlefields, or not at all.

Yeah, that's a little bleak."

Bleak and also inaccurate.

1 Like

Kåre เลียม Enga

Nov 7, 2024 at 10:19pm
In response to "Past and Future Intents"

I must live in the present. In the past I daydreamed a lot... probably to escape the bruises of reality; however, I need to be more aware crossing streets or even how I get out of bed (no rapid movements without thinking of consequences).

I can envision a future more peaceful than the present because this time-and-place isn't the only "present" that's ever existed, and I do try to see the larger view (emphasis on 'try').

1 Like

August 11, 2023 at 10:30am

#1053952

Earth

Getting back to my list of solar system articles, this one's about a planet most of you know.

When will the Earth try to kill us again?
Most mass extinctions began with vast convulsions of Earth’s interior—can we detect that?

Why would you want to detect that? Are you going to try to warn the rest of us, who won't listen, and end up sending your kid away in a rocket to a distant planet where they'll have superpowers?

But seriously, though, unless we can do something about an impending disaster (or would that be displanet), just don't tell us. We're still doomed, only without the riots and panic.

Our planet Earth has extinguished large portions of its inhabitants several times since the dawn of animals.

Think of it like shaking an Etch-a-Sketch.

And if science tells us anything, it will surely try to kill us all again.

Except now, it's got competition. Well, it always did; the asteroid impact wasn't the planet's fault, except maybe for having the audacity to orbit into the path of the asteroid. But now we're the competition, too. Though, philosophically, we're part of the planet, so maybe it spawned us for the purpose of wiping out the latest Etch-a-Sketch.

But it seems like, in terms of mass extinction events, scary meteorites are in the minority.

In the words of researchers David Bond and Stephen Grasby, who reviewed the evidence in 2016: “Despite much searching, there remains only one confirmed example of a bolide impact coinciding with an extinction event.”

Real quick:

Asteroid: rock in space (though as I've said before, this should be the name for hemorrhoids)
Meteor: the same rock, in the atmosphere, leaving an ionization trail
Meteorite: the same rock, having hit the ground.
Bolide: the rock explodes before it hits the ground.

There's more to it than all that, but I find it unlikely that the Chicxulub rock was technically a bolide. But whatever.

Volcanism, on the other hand, has coincided with most, if not all, mass extinctions—it looks suspiciously like a serial killer, if you like.

I don't like. No. It's not like we can arrest Hephaestus.

This isn’t your regular Vesuvius/St. Helens/Hawaii style volcanism. It’s not even super-volcanoes like Yellowstone or Tambora. I’m talking about something far, far bigger: a rare, epic volcanic phenomenon called a Large Igneous Province or “LIP.”

LIP? What the fuck, geologists?

Anyway, the article goes on to describe these doomsday events, in excruciating detail, with color graphics even.

So if our serial killer is the volcanism associated with an LIP eruption, when will it strike again?

And can we beat it to the punch?

Their images reveal fat mantle plumes, regions of hot rock as wide as France, rising like chimneys through the mantle.

C'est très chaud.

LIPs may be on a cycle. On average, there’s one every 15 million years, with the last occurring 16 million years ago (the Columbia River LIP in northwestern USA). By that rough reckoning, we are overdue for another.

That's not how averages work, and a science author oughta know that.

Still, it could happen at any time. Sooner or later, as Susan Ivanova said on Babylon 5, boom. It's inevitable.

And if Olson is right, the field reversal will give us more than 30 million years’ advance warning of the next LIP (for perspective, human ancestors separated from chimp ancestors about 7 million years ago).

So, no need to worry about the sun turning into a red giant in 5 billion years or so. We're doomed long before that. Get your kid into a rocket now!

The climate effects of volcanic gases are deadlier still. Stratospheric sulfur from Laki cooled the planet by 1.3 degrees Celsius for three years, triggering one of the most severe winters on record in Europe, North America, Russia, and Japan.

That seems perfect right about now. Unfortunately, as the article notes, it's short-lived and followed by a much longer warming period.

At the end of the Permian, the Siberian Traps LIP erupted staggering quantities of lava for 300,000 years with relatively little environmental effect, just like the Paraná–Etendeka and Columbia River LIPs. Precise rock dating shows that Earth’s most severe mass extinction only began when sheets of magma, called “sills,” began to inject underground through sediments rich in fossil fuels, igniting them and baking off gases, as Seth Burgess describes:

Whew, good thing we've gotten rid of most of those fossil fuels, then.

Human mining and burning of fossil fuels mimics the most deadly LIPs. Even if LIP greenhouse gas emissions were larger and lasted far longer, our emission rates are far faster, so they are just as capable of overwhelming Earth’s neutralizing mechanisms. This is compounded by a cacophony of other man-made environmental disturbances (pollution, acid rain, deforestation, and so on).

Or not.

One of the talking points I hear from climate change deniers is that the climate has changed before. While technically true, in those cases, no one was around who could have caused it, or could have done anything about it.

We did, and we can.

But we won't.

5 Like • Comment • View 3 comments

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