Tag: geometry
The universe may have a complex geometry — like a doughnut
The cosmos may have something in common with a doughnut.
In addition to their fried, sugary goodness, doughnuts are known for their shape, or in mathematical terms, their topology. In a universe with an analogous, complex topology, you could travel across the cosmos and end up back where you started. Such a cosmos hasn’t yet been ruled out, physicists report in the April 26 Physical Review Letters.
On a shape with boring, or trivial topology, any closed path you
How geometry solves architectural problems for bees and wasps
Honeybees and yellow jackets don’t look much like mathematicians — for one thing, they’re smaller. But collectively, the insects can solve a common architectural conundrum using a geometric solution that they evolved independently of each other.
As their colonies grow, these bees and wasps eventually need to increase the size of the hexagonal cells that make up their nests. But nest material is expensive, and it’s hard to efficiently combine hexagons of different sizes into a single continuous array. Both