Old Islamic Tile Patterns Show Modern Math Insight

arbitraryaardvark writes "Reuters reports that medieval Muslims made a mega math marvel. Tile patterns on middle eastern mosques display a kind of quasicrystalline effect that was unknown in the west until rediscovered by Penrose in the 1970s. 'Quasicrystalline patterns comprise a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry.' It isn't known if the mosque designers understood the math behind the patterns or not."

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[Anonymous Coward]

medieval Muslims made a mega math marvel

Asinine alliterations alienate audience

Re:Tasty thoughts

[networkzombie]

Oooh, look. That looks like a watch. There must be a watchmaker.

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure either aliens or reptoids built it, just like with the pyramids.

Re:Not Surprising

[value_added]

The Arabs got zero from the Indians through their trading contacts actually. See the Wikipedia entry: History of Zero.

Nah, that was just one of the first examples of outsourcing.

A more interesting link [wikipedia.org].

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[MicrosoftRepresentit]

When I was three I drew the Mandelbrot set in crayons and moments later modelled part of the quaternian Julia set out of plasticine. It wasn't until I was 9 that I understood the maths behind it, which I think proves your point.

Re:Tasty thoughts

[larry bagina]

Just add a harvard symbologist, a beautiful egyption female mathematician, and a one-armed assassin for the plot of a Dan Brown book.

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[grimdawg]

I know the feeling. I proved the Poincare Conjecture when I was 8, using a balloon a stapler. Unfortunately, I assumed it was trivial and never went public.

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[matlhDam]

I proved the Poincare Conjecture when I was 8, using a balloon a stapler. Unfortunately, I assumed it was trivial and never went public.

Ah, I see. Proof by explosion.

Re:Giving rise to the question: what don't *we* kn

[LittleBigLui]

What might be the "???" ?

Nobody knows, but the step after that will be Profit!

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother fed me from a Klein bottle.

Re:Tasty thoughts

[ConceptJunkie]

After decades of arduous archaeological work, months of supercomputer time (including hundreds of CPU years using a popular new BOINC module) and the lifetime work of more than a dozen mathematicians, cryptologists, experts in medieval Arabic and early second millenium Muslim culture (which in many ways led the world in science, math, astronomy and philosophy), the incredible Mosque mosaics were finally decoded:

Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine.

Youssef Abu Sufah, a British scholar of 12th century Muslim architecture and amateur mathematician summed up the almost unanimous response of the scientific, mathematical, and historical communities with the following observation:

Son of a bitch!

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[JDevers]

Hey, alien's built my house and it doesn't use any funky math...oh wait, you mean a different type of alien...

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[MadMidnightBomber]

Well, I solved the halting problem when I was 11 and went on to overturn the second law of thermodynamics. But my dog ate the homework assignment before I could turn it in.

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[EatHam]

That they couldn't do math, and the arabs couldn't write. They got together and made the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of math and english, which is what the SATs are based on to this day.

Re:The Catholic Church happened.

[silentounce]

Others have already posted to your comment so I will keep it short.

THAT was short?! You must be new here.

Oh, please...

[Venik]

We all know it's pure chance they stumbled into these mathematical patterns. What can Arabs possibly know about algebra and numbers in general? Oh, wait...