Google Julia Set Logo

Gaston Maurice Julia

[georgeek]

A logo to commemorate the birthday of French mathematician Gaston Maurice Julia on 3 Feb 1893.

Gaston Julia first described 'Julia sets' which are closely related to 'Mandelbrot sets', hence the fractal art work in the logo.

Good job Google!

[Slade]

but click the link, then click Web.

The first result was slashdot'ed and now has a semi-nasty message against google.

[creative craig]

Question: Should Google ask permission before potentially sending huge traffic loads to a single page/server?

That bit was not there early this morning, seems they have had a rethink :)

Craig

[ciml]

This one takes me back; who would have thought that x^2+c could be so exciting?

...and for people who don't want to be in the image search , there's always this:
[google.com...]

[Chelsea]

Surely it's Z^2 + a constant, where Z is a complex number, a rather different case to x^2

[ciml]

The c is complex too, so you might find (x + yi)^2 + a + bi easier to follow.

[GoogleGuy]

Mmm. Those Julia sets remind me of when I wrote a fractal snowflake program. I wrote it in PostScript, which of course is a programming language, not just a way to describe pages. It was recursive; each iteration with more detail would occupy more memory in the interpreter in the printer (yes, you could do it much more cleanly, but this was a long looong time ago). A snowflake with level 4 detail printed and looked great. I tried a level 5 snowflake and the printer locked up. We had to turn the printer on and off a few times to clear that program out of memory.

[Tom_Dalton]

Okay... "Should Google ask permission before sending large amounts of traffic?"

It is interesting -- Google's link has the same effect as a Denial of Service attack. But then, so did (or, could have, anyway) those flash mobs that were in the news a while back. But that was just an expression of the free speech and free movement that are inherent privileges of our society.

It would certainly be *nice* if Google told people in advance, so the target site could brace itself. (Set up a filter to limit pages coming from a certain referrer page, for instance.)

But they sure don't *have* to.

[glengara]

Sort of surprised at the lack of speculation as to why G is honouring M. Julia, I'll have to come up with some myself then.

[borisbaloney]

Sort of surprised at the lack of speculation as to why G is honouring M. Julia, I'll have to come up with some myself then.

There are stoners at G?

Mmmmmmmmmm perty colors.

[kevinpate]

hmm, could it be ... one's person's vision of mathmatically precise beauty is another person's vision of a somewhat twisted mismash?

disclaimer 1:
no reference to any webmasters, se staffers, or philosophers is intended or implied 8^)

disclaimer 2:
no statements in this particularpost are made under oath. 8^)

[Peeress]

Yes, as georgeek said, "good job Google!" I always enjoy Google's logo artwork.

[Total Paranoia]

I tried a level 5 snowflake and the printer locked up. We had to turn the printer on and off a few times to clear that program out of memory.

GG trying to tell us something here? Seems like and odd post to me.

Translates to:

We tried a new algorithm that was supposed to clean up some spam but the centers locked up. We have to turn the datacenters on and off a few times to clear that algo out of memory.

Thanks GG - I will sleep well tonight now.

;)

[markis00]

I think you're over speculating, Total

[rfgdxm1]

I like how some people on Usenet were wondering if the gang at Google were acid heads? For those who are unaware, a common type of hallucination caused by LSD is fractals. ;) The real answer is much simpler. The Google crew includes a lot of people with an interest in mathematics.

[kiril]

Migraines often look like fractals too. That's just a personal observation, not a political statement in regard to Google.

I got an email today from a friend saying that this Google Logo wins the "Obscurity Cup". He asked me if I'd heard of Julia. I hadn't, but I'm a physicist and not a mathematician (or fractal fan).

Still, I like the idea of Google drawing attention to the semi-obscure. I offered my friend a few Google text logos for some important physicists. Some of the names are well known, but the logos may be obscure:

Werner Heisenberg:?oo?le
Max Planck: Googte
Ernest Rutherford: Google-
Wolfgang Pauli: G(OO'-O'O)gle
John Slater: ¦Google¦
Johannes van der Waals: G o o g l e
Felix Bloch: ...GoogleGoogleGoogle...

[rfgdxm1]

>Migraines often look like fractals too. That's just a personal observation, not a political statement in regard to Google.

As the resident psychopharmacology geek here, I offer:

[migraines.org...]

This mentions that Lewis Carrol may have been inspired by hallucinations from migraine aura.

[GoogleGuy]

My comment was just because I was thinking about fractals. But I think that they did tweak the query later in the day to distribute the traffic to different sites.

[glengara]

Right, I threatened my own speculation if the quality wasn't up to scratch.......

G will be using Mandelbrot's work with Julian fractals in mapping the inter-connectivity between "expert" pages to determine "affiliation" for the new TSPR ;-)