Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts:

Today's fractal image is a scene on the main spike of its parent fractal, which is an over-sized Mandelbrot set corrupted by order-7 elements.  The scene is located just beyond the large minibrot on the main spike, at a magnitude where the minibrots have totally morphed into order-7 ones with 6 bays.  These tiny order-7 minibrots are clearly visible, scattered all around the large central minibrot.

But in the world of fractals, things do not always go as we expect, and today's image is certainly a good example.  I named the image "Mystery Theater" because of the mysterious things happening in it.

To begin, the large minibrot has 12 bays, which would make it of order-13, a prime number that exists nowhere in the generating expression.  To make things worse, the minibrot is surrounded by 14 elements, which would appear to make it of order-14.

My first thought was that the large minibrot is actually a partial merging of two order-7 minibrots.  Sometimes this does happen.  But if this is the case, the merging in today's image is the most perfect I have yet stumbled upon.

With no obvious rational explanation for all the mathematical craziness, the image remains a mystery.  All in all, the image fully earns its name.

The rating of an 8 is based mostly on the mathematical interest, though the artistic value is not to be ignored.

The calculation time of 24 seconds is about as fast as FOTD fractals ever get, and will not test the patience of even the most impatient fractalist.

The brilliant sun that burst forth at sunrise today here at Fractal Central did not last long.  By midday, the clouds had moved in, and by afternoon, snow was threatening.  The fractal cats were more concerned about the chilly morning temperature of 16F -9C than with the forecast of light snow.  They demanded more warmth.

FL and I, the local humans, had an uneventful day, which was pleasant to experience but makes dull reporting.  The next FOTD will be posted in 24 hours.  Until then, take care, and as I see it, religion is the greatest cause of conflict ever invented by humanity.  Even today, its conflicting claims continue to infest our species with hatred.  But if we were to eliminate it, what would we replace it with?  Materialistic science could never fill the emptiness, nor does it wish to.  And when we look behind the mask of Atheism, which claims to be somehow different from religion, we find just another set of undemonstrable beliefs (in this case, disbeliefs) about God and heaven, none of which are likely to bring peace of mind to a world troubled by the failure of traditional religion.

Jim (neither a believer nor disbeliever) Muth
jimmuth@earthlink.net


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frm:MultiExp   { ; Jim Muth
z=(0,0), c=pixel, a=-(real(p1)-2),
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END PARAMETER FILE=========================================