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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 14 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 17, 2023 at 10:22am

#1054219

The Seventh Planet

So far, in my random meanderings around the solar system, I've hit Mercury, Earth, Pluto, and the mysterious, undiscovered-as-yet Planet Ix.

This... this is the one I've been dreading.

Uranus: Why we should visit the most unloved planet

I should point out that this article is from the BBC. The thing about the BBC is that they have this reputation, at least on my side of the pond, for being stodgy, straightforward, mostly reliable, and largely disinclined to the tabloid excesses of certain other UK outlets.

This reputation is only slightly deserved. They have a remarkable sense of humo(u)r sometimes, but often, you have to look for it. For example, their native video player? Some years ago, I noticed that the volume control slider goes to 11.

That cannot be an accident.

So with that out of the way, it's time to dive in...

The butt (snigger) of countless jokes, Uranus is almost certainly the most unloved planet in our solar system. It always seems to get overlooked when the mission invitations go out.

Okay, good, acknowledge the issue in the lede. People are going to make the jokes anyway; you might as well get ahead of them.

(To head off more of the tiresomely inevitable, yes, I've seen the Urectum clip from Futurama.)

Spacecraft have been sent to Mercury, Mars, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter. There is even one on its way to non-planet Pluto.

Dwarf planet. Also, this article is from 2014, before New Horizons zipped past Pluto. It's not like Uranus has changed much in 9 years, apart from progressing further in its orbit.

But Uranus (pronounced “yur-an-us” in polite astronomical circles) does not deserve its dull, or comic, reputation.

Pronouncing it Urine-us doesn't help matters. One could go back to its Greek origins and pronounce it "oor-an-ohs," but that's just weird. I usually call it "the seventh planet" to avoid the inevitable bad jokes, but that doesn't work either, and besides, I end up watching people mumbling "Mercury, Venus, Earth..." while counting on their fingers.

“Uranus really stands out,” says University of Oxford planetary scientist, Leigh Fletcher.

I'm just going to pause here while you get this out of your system.

With a volume 60 times that of Earth, Uranus is a compressed mass of toxic gases, including methane...

NOT HELPING.

“We don’t have a solid surface on any of these giant planets,” says Fletcher. “There’re no sharp boundaries, nothing to stand or sail on, but there’s a continuous progression from gas to liquid to some sort of solid.”

Okay, jokes aside, this is hard to wrap one's head around. We're used to pretty low pressures, and clear dividing lines between the three classical states of matter. Sure, you can always think of exceptions, like silly putty, but for the most part, gas, liquid, and solid (dammit, more pun fodder there) are well-defined. Even the extreme pressure at the bottom of the ocean isn't enough to push water into some sort of boundary state.

In a giant (Uranus is classed as an ice giant), the pressures get way higher than that. It's difficult to visualize, but it gets weird.

Circled by 26 small moons, a few faint rings and a weak magnetic field Uranus appears to be tipped over on its side. Every planet has a slight tilt when it spins – it gives us our seasons – but unlike every other planet in the solar system, Uranus rotates on an axis pointing almost directly at the Sun. Something that Fletcher describes as “really weird”.

This is a bit misleading, but only a bit. It's close enough in essence. For one thing, the axis doesn't point at the Sun (except for twice in an orbit); it would be more appropriate to say that the axis is roughly parallel to the plane of the solar system.

“Imagine a world where winter lasts 42 Earth years and you don’t see the Sun once during that time,” he says.

That's probably easier to imagine than the whole states-of-matter weirdness in the depths.

Fletcher is part of an international team that believes Uranus has been neglected for too long.

See? Subtle.

This group of space scientists and engineers from Europe, the United States and several other nations, including Japan, is working on a $600m mission proposal for the European Space Agency (ESA) with the aim of sending out a space probe, within the next 10 years, to discover why Uranus is so odd.

Go ahead, call it the Uranus probe. You know you want to.

From what I can tell, this mission never materialized. Bummer.

However, there is a good reason why, in the entire history of space exploration, only one mission has visited Uranus: it is extremely difficult.

And as the article notes, that one mission was a flyby.

There's also some issues with launch windows. Any mission out that far requires gravity assist from other planets, and they have to be in a good configuration to do that. So it's doubtful that we'll send a robot out there in my lifetime. That's okay. Once I'm dead, I won't be able to get mad at all the stupid ass-puns.

6 Like • Comment • View 5 comments

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