The Bizarre Object We Believed Was Impossible to Visualize

The Bizarre Object We Believed Was Impossible to Visualize: Is it possible to visualize this object in 3-D space? You might not think so — after all, a globe cannot be flattened into two dimensions, without distorting the distance between points on it. However, researchers in France have now accomplished exactly that.

The key, they explain, is to use corrugations. They piled up corrugations, until the distances between points was accurate.

The resulting surfaces of the objects are what are known as smooth fractals, which the researchers say lie halfway between fractals and ordinary surfaces...