From Rocks To Icebergs, the Natural World Tends To Break Into Cubes 34
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Researchers have found that when everything from icebergs to rocks breaks apart, their pieces tend to resemble cubes. The finding suggests a universal rule of fragmentation at scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary. The scientists started their study "fragmenting" an abstract cube in a computer simulation by slicing it with 50 two-dimensional planes inserted at random angles. The planes cut the cube into 600,000 fragments, which were, on average, cubic themselves -- meaning that, on average, the fragments had six sides that were quadrangles, although any individual fragment need not be a cube. The result led the researchers to suspect that cubes might be a common feature of fragmentation.
The researchers tried to confirm this hunch using real-world measurements. They headed to an outcrop of the mineral dolomite on the mountain Harmashatarhegy in Budapest, Hungary, and counted the number of vertices in cracks in the stone face. Most of these cracks formed squarish shapes, which is one of the faces of a cube, regardless of if they had been weathered naturally or had been created by humans dynamiting the mountain. Finally, the team created more-powerful supercomputer simulations modeling the breakup of 3D materials under idealized conditions -- like a rock being pulled equally in all directions. Such cases formed polyhedral pieces that were, in an average sense, cubes. The researchers reported their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers tried to confirm this hunch using real-world measurements. They headed to an outcrop of the mineral dolomite on the mountain Harmashatarhegy in Budapest, Hungary, and counted the number of vertices in cracks in the stone face. Most of these cracks formed squarish shapes, which is one of the faces of a cube, regardless of if they had been weathered naturally or had been created by humans dynamiting the mountain. Finally, the team created more-powerful supercomputer simulations modeling the breakup of 3D materials under idealized conditions -- like a rock being pulled equally in all directions. Such cases formed polyhedral pieces that were, in an average sense, cubes. The researchers reported their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It's a series of cubes! (Score:1)
Re: It's a series of cubes! (Score:2)
It's hip to be square.
Re: (Score:2)
Minecraft (Score:1)
So? (Score:2)
Narrator: (Score:4, Insightful)
"It doesn't, the natural world is mostly made of hot plasma and cold photons, which don't really break, and when they do they break in things that don't really have sharp edges or even distinct shapes".
The universe is made of voxels (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Does this mean blockheads occur spontaneously? (Score:3)
That sounds rather pleasant, actually. (Score:2)
Everything is Cubes with Data scientist. (Score:3)
Journalist to the Data scientist: So what have you done? .... (bla bla bla)
Data scientist: Well we took the data of 3d renderings of a bunch of materials from rocks to icebergs and we broke the data down into cubes for
What is published: From Rocks to Icebergs the natural world tends to break into cubes
Re: (Score:2)
Link to the study (Score:2)
https://twitter.com/kitasenjud... [twitter.com]
Research? (Score:2)
Was this research, or a way to get grant money for a summer trip to Budapest, Hungary?
Re: (Score:1)
I like my prostitutes to be hungary, but not too hungary.
concentric circles (Score:2)
I live near water. When the conditions are right and the water is still enough the wave patterns bounce around in such a way as to form squares on the water. IIRC there is a thing called 'scale indifference' where a feature in nature looks the same no matter what size it is so perhaps this happens in fluid states of matter and may influence the formation of such shapes when they solidify.
Timecube > Spacecube (Score:2)
...sorry in advance if anyone actually reads this.
So things with a crystalline structure... (Score:2)
... tend to break along weak points in that structure?
Guess diamond cutters have been right for centuries!
Uh crystal cleavage planes? (Score:2)
Not everything breaks into cubes... i'm confused. The geometry of fractures is well known, or so I assumed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Crystal Structures (Score:2)
Aha! (Score:2)
So much [spaceanswers.com] for your round earth theories.
We live in Minecraft.. (Score:3)
all the comments are silly jokes (Score:1)
is the slashverse full of giddy children, these days?
materials science observes and classifies solids by the forms they break into.
these forms are myriad.
according to the slash (have not read the article) the authors results are based on two computer simulations and one trip to a single dolomite mountain.
this is not research, this is rubbish - throw the bums out, they are wasting resources.
Re: (Score:2)
The CUBE! (Score:2)
Everything Old is New Again ... (Score:2)
Alt title: "How to write-off an adventure" (Score:1)
for a sufficiently loose definition of cube.... (Score:2)
What they should have done was get a handful of sand from several different beaches, and looked at all the grains of sand. You can't get much more fractured than that. But don't try desert sand, that stuff has been polished too smooth.
Or a few handfulls of dirt from various places. Wash away the humus until you're left with silt, and then examine it under a microscope.
For a sufficiently loose definition of cube, you'll find the stuff is generally cubic. It sure wouldn't pass as a cube in geometry class.
World is made of ... voxels! (Score:1)
Game developers knew this instinctively for quite some time.
"on average" (Score:1)
*facepalm*
Do they not know that the average of a set does not need to even be contained in the set?
Bow can they be such advanced researchers, yet so incredibly mentally retarded?