Is the Universe Fractal? Exploring the Link Between Fractal Geometry and Physics

[cam875]

does fractal geometry when applied to physics state that no matter how far you zoom in on something you never reach a fundamental discrete or quantized level? someone told me that a while ago and I am now currently interested in fractals and their application with nature.

 

[mikelepore]

It's a fact that when you zoom in on things you will find quantized behaviors, therefore you can't continuously extend fractal patterns. What did you think, that the pattern repetition in a fern plant would keep going all way way down to the makeup of atoms?

 

[cam875]

no I was just wondering if it was possible that things never became discrete and you could keep forever zooming in whether fractal patterns were present or not.

 

[mikelepore]

I don't understand the meaning of "never become discrete." It has been known for about 200 years that matter is made of parts assembled together. The molecule is the smallest unit of a chemical compound that has the properties of that substance.

 

[TheDestroyer]

If you keep zooming without loosing anything, this would lead to too many wrong phenomena in physics. The most critical phenomenon I thought of is that the density of all materials will be the same, and will be veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy huge that everything will collapse to a black hole :P.

Rutherford has proven that most of the matter is vacuum (review Rutherford's experiment), and from there people started to think how they can form huge objects like we live with from small units that share a lot with vacuum. The only solution was "atoms", where every few charges group together with their masses to form the very first unit of building everything. With the advantages of this unit we can build everything.

Actually this isn't seen only in microscopic behavior, but also in macroscopic behavior. If you review the big bang and check its results, you'll see that stars haven't gone alone, but created clusters of mass, namely galaxies.

A FACT WE DON'T UNDERSTAND AND WE'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND: EVERYTHING likes to be together, nothing likes to be alone ;)

I hope this answers your question :)

 

[mistergrinch]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we can say that we have found an absolute smallest unit of matter, so whether or not the universe is fractal is an open question. As we go up in scales it certainly seems possible that our universe is just a particle in a much larger structure, and this pattern could repeat forever. I suspect fractals are telling us something deep about our universe that we haven't yet fully wrapped our minds around. Perhaps there is a fractal "scale invariance" principle that hasn't been discovered yet, analogous to relativistic invariance, such that the laws of physics are the same on all scales?