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Fearful Symmetry Triptych

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While grappling with the works of William Blake and his foremost literary interpreter, Northrop Frye in his book Fearful Symmetry , I came up with a triptych, where each of the three panels uses a different mode of expression and there is a vertical symmetry based on the pentagram that reflects the natures of the fallen and unfallen worlds.   The left panel (below) presents the basic information that is then presented schematically in the next or central panel, and then as images and art in the right panel: Reflected in the central panel is the symmetry of Blake's unfallen and fallen worlds. The line inscribed on the Ouroboros is from Fearful Symmetry(p.135): "Selfhood: an earth-bound, cold-blooded and often venomous form of life imprisoned in its own cycle of death and rebirth."  The right hand panel is made up of two engravings by William Blake. The top engraving is referred to as The Dance of Albion , 1780. The lines between the engravings are...
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An X-ray View of Space

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If you had X-ray Vision what would space look like?  Now NASA has revealed what you would see.  Outer Space looking a whole lot busier than usual in an image Jackson Pollock might have admired: Visit the NASA web page that explores this image: NICER’s Night Moves Trace the X-ray Sky The same image with some prominent x-ray sources labelled NICER is NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition E xploreR.  Learn all about it at the... NASA NICER Information Page  NASA also has some great education videos about all the different wavelengths of light that make up  the electromagnetic spectrum, including x-rays: The spectrum below displays the uses to which we put various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum: For more on the above illustration, take the NASA Science: Tour of the Electromagnetic Spectrum Science at NASA video about x-rays The TED Educational Service  has an excellent video on the history ...
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Light Invisible

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It is very humbling to contemplate the electromagnetic spectrum and the tiny sliver that encompasses the full range of colors we can perceive.   For his Chemistry Lab , Ken Costello considered this to mean that in terms of the full spectrum we are indeed...  "The entire light spectrum (also known as the electromagnetic spectrum) spans light waves that are miles long to waves that are extremely short. The light we see (visible light) only spans about 1.5% of the entire light spectrum. So we would be legally blind considering what we could see." Experiment 7: Light as a Tool To clarify the extent of this blindness, Ken Costello compared full spectrum perception to the color picture of a mountain scene (left) and then removed all but 1.5 percent of the color (right) to emphasize the 1.5 percent of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can actually perceive: Clearly we are missing a lot and it is only by using powerful scientific instruments that w...
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Observatable Universe in a Single Image

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ScienceAlert Article:  The Entire Known Universe, in a Single Image.  Here's What It Looks Like  Created by musician and artist Pablo Carlos Budassi , there is lots more information available in his Blog: Observable Universe Logarithmic Illustration Blog   The entire observable Universe can be featured because the distance scale diminishes exponentially the further you go out from the Earth according to the following scale: This scale is featured on the version of the illustration that features helpful labels: Further information on the logarithmic projection for maps is provided by Philippe Rivière including an interactive sample projection centered on Iceland which can be observed as variables are altered:   The Log-Azimuthal projection   As we look further and further away we also look further and further back in time since light although fast, does take time to travel long distances.   NASA...
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Index of Posts

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Index of Posts Beauty or Reality?     Cartoon Religion Complaints Spark a Redesign of the Zoodles Can   Guns and Laughter   Imaginary Prisons of Piranesi   Light Invisible  Observatable Universe in a Single Image Paradoxical Arrow of Kokichi Sugihara      Reunion of Body and Soul   Scientists have discovered an entirely new shape and it is all over you!   Snakes   Strangest Optical Illusions Known to Science Street Picture Optical Illusion The Kiss Virtuosity of Complex Numbers   X-ray View of Space   Fearful Symmetry Triptych  
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Scientists have discovered an entirely new shape and it is all over you!

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It turns out that your skin cells employ a shape previously unknown to both biologists and mathematicians... Science Alert: Scientists Have Discovered an Entirely New Shape, And It Was Hiding in Your Cells Gizmodo: The 'Scutoid' Is Geometry's Newest Shape, and It Could Be All Over Your Body The original research article:  Scutoids are a geometrical solution to three-dimensional packing of epithelia The 'scutoid' shape (d) was named in homage to the scutellum    – a posterior portion of the thorax in some insects, which resembles the same mini-triangle shape (e)...  
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Paradoxical Arrow of Kokichi Sugihara

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The Japanese mathematican Kokichi Sugihara has developed this 3D Arrow model: You can can get some idea of what's going on here when he picks it up and shows it from above: ScienceAlert Article on Kokichi Sugihara: This 3D Optical Illusion Will Make You Question The Shape of Reality   More 3D Illusions by Kokichi Sugihara: ScienceAlert: Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion Many other fascinating illusions can be viewed at the... Best Illusions of the Year Website   Creative Sam's Video of the 7 Best Optical Illusions of All Time... Including the Train Illusion which is somewhat like the dancer that spins two ways...
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