Physicist Explains Cthulhu's "Non-Euclidean Geometry"

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Physicist Explains Cthulhu's "Non-Euclidean Geometry"

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 31, 2012 @12:02PM from the dead-but-dreaming dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mathematician Benjamin K. Tippett has written a fascinating and deadpan paper (Pdf) giving insights into Cthulhu. A 'Bubble' of warped Space-Time makes alarmingly consistent sense of the dead God's cyclopean city under the sea. From the paper: 'We calculate the type of matter which would be required to generate such exotic spacetime curvature. Unfortunately, we determine that the required matter is quite unphysical, and possess a nature which is entirely alien to all of the experiences of human science. Indeed, any civilization with mastery over such matter would be able to construct warp drives, cloaking devices, and other exotic geometries required to conveniently travel through the cosmos.'"

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So it's a Sci-Fi? by tgmarks · 2012-10-31 12:07 · Score: 2

So it's a Sci-Fi article?
1. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by jest3r · 2012-10-31 12:32 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  This unphysical non-Euclidean post brought to you by Hewlett Packard.
2. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by cranq · 2012-10-31 12:49 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Some good SF has some similar roots...
  One example that I like is Charles Stross' Laundry series, which starts with this story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atrocity_Archives
  
  --
  Regards, your friendly neighbourhood cranq
3. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by Freddybear · 2012-10-31 14:03 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  They're online for free at: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/
4. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by Jonah+Hex · 2012-10-31 15:06 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  HP Lovecraft was a product of his times, and he recanted these views before his death. He also married a Jewish woman, although at the time he did so he still had some strong feelings against immigrants. There are a few really good documentaries on him that go into this aspect of his life.
  
  Also, he's a huge influence on my own work, the Maniac Loveseat series I do especially. - HEX
  
  --
  Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
5. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by PlusFiveTroll · 2012-10-31 16:06 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Excuse or reason? If you were born to parents of racists it's highly likely that you would hold their worldview, at least for some time in your life, till you had the knowledge and experience to form opinions otherwise. It is easy now to look into the past and judge, how will history look upon you and judge what you are ignorant in?
6. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by Lord+Kano · 2012-10-31 16:51 · Score: 5, Interesting
  Many people are born into racist families and when they are old enough to discover the world for themselves, they become disabused of the notions that their parents held.
  Lovecraft was 22 years old when he penned this gem.
  When, long ago, the gods created Earth
  In Jove’s fair image Man was shaped at birth.
  The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
  Yet were they too remote from humankind.
  To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
  Th’Olympian host conceiv’d a clever plan.
  A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
  Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.
  There is a difference between the ignorance born of unfamiliarity and race hatred. Lovecraft practiced the latter. Lovecraft lived in a time of northern migration of a lot of blacks who sought to escape the crushing racism of the south. So I can surmise that he encountered some black people who fit the stereotypes that were common in his day but to accept such as the norm is akin to meeting one stingy Jew and operating as if they're all Shylock.
  Lovecraft was a piece of shit racist. I don't care how many people enjoy his writing.
  LK
  --
  "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
7. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by Interfacer · 2012-10-31 20:00 · Score: 2
  
  I don't think that was his point.
  Whenever the constitution (or anything involving the founding of the US) gets discussed, conservatives drag the founders into the discussion, arguing that they did or did not mean X when they wrote Y. As if the founders were somehow wise sages, and we're not worthy. The reality is that they were fallible people with their own bad and nasty sides. Just because they would not have agreed with something is no reason not to do it.
  At least, that's what I think the point was.
8. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by awrowe · 2012-10-31 22:13 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  What I find fascinating is the propensity of supposedly intelligent people to judge the past using the morals of the present, without taking into account the prevailing culture of that period they are being so judgemental of.
  Equally interesting and rather more worrying is the tendency to want to completely erase a person from history when it is discovered the person has a flaw.
  So Lovecraft was a racist. So were many of his era, to the point where not holding those views was unusual at best. Does that really invalidate the literary merit of his work?
  No person is defined by a single aspect of their personality, we are far too complex for that. If that were the case, people would not be able to learn and adjust to new viewpoints of any kind, much less moral viewpoints.
  We do not change reality by changing the law, says your sig. It's true, we don't. We also don't change the past by denying it. And we can't change the future without learning from our past.
  Finally - and this is intended to be thought provoking rather than insulting - how is your prejudice against people because of the views they hold any different from the prejudice against people because of the colour of their skin? You are placing them in a box labelled "arsehole", purely because of the views they hold, in spite of the fact that their racism was culturally normal and was only a single aspect of their humanity, much like a black man's skin. I'd be uncomfortable with that myself.
  
  --
  A.I. Research. The peculiar science in which we know the question and we know the answer, but can't show the working
9. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by ghostdoc · 2012-10-31 22:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  agree completely.
  We live in an 'enlightened' age where we realise that racism is a bad thing. But we subscribe to plenty of other virulent irrational hatreds (according to another age's moral viewpoint). How would we feel if the best and brightest of our generation were discarded from future history books for being religious, or disagreeing with homosexual marriage, or eating meat, or supporting climate alarmism, or driving cars, or any one of a hundred other things that we consider normal now?
  Our current views are incomprehensible to an educated person of 200 years ago. An educated person of 200 year's time will probably find our current worldview primitive beyond belief.
  Hesitate to judge, lest ye be judged in turn. Appreciate the genius of Lovecraft's writing and ignore his irrational prejudices.
  
  --
  Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
10. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by myowntrueself · 2012-10-31 23:03 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  What I find fascinating is the propensity of supposedly intelligent people to judge the past using the morals of the present, without taking into account the prevailing culture of that period they are being so judgemental of.
  Equally interesting and rather more worrying is the tendency to want to completely erase a person from history when it is discovered the person has a flaw.
  And Gary Glitter is, today, a pedophile. Yet any of the girls I went to school with would have done anything to have sex with him; they'd have been throwing themselves at him. I think that at the time everyone expected that he was having sex with young girls and the shock would have been if it turned out he *wasn't*.
  The past is a different country.
  
  --
  In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
11. Re:So it's a Sci-Fi? by wdef · 2012-10-31 23:34 · Score: 2
  
  Quite possibly. The point I was making is that human society seems to need people - The Other - who can be stripped of any humanity on the basis of one labelled characteristic or another. But show me some evidence that says stripping anyone of their humanity actually improves society. There's no evidence to support the death penalty as a successful deterrent for example. Yet it is still used as the ultimate demonstration of State power and to satisfy a sadistic yearning and frustration in the populace. That is what it is for; it has nothing to do with "justice" or crime prevention, anyone who believes so is an idiot. The labels change but the process itself of identifying sections of society to be ostracized, even tortured while society stands by approvingly (eg society facilitates rape in prison since stopping this crime is actually a quite easy problem to solve - all it needs is surveillance +/- single occupant cells). Usually the process is irrational - if not outright counterproductive - and its ostensible goals quite irrelevant to what is actually happening (which few admit so as not to "side with the enemy") but it's a highly successful tool for manipulating the unwashed. All we need is some justification, oftentimes a recourse to old falsehoods, half truths or ingrained, dangerously simplistic ideas about good/evil.
A still mainly unexplored genre by CRCulver · 2012-10-31 12:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

Satirical scientific articles are a field of literature ripe for expansion. The only one I know of to have really found a wide readership (at least among those who follow modern literature) is Georges Perec's Cantatrix Sopranica L. . Of course, the Sokal hoax paper is also a brilliant piece of writing.
1. Re:A still mainly unexplored genre by cranq · 2012-10-31 12:31 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Along the lines of this classic by Larry Niven... http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html
  
  --
  Regards, your friendly neighbourhood cranq
2. Re:A still mainly unexplored genre by runeghost · 2012-10-31 12:52 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Or this one by Issac Asimov:
  http://asimov.info/the-endochronic-properties-of-resublimated-thiotimoline
3. Re:A still mainly unexplored genre by horizontech10 · 2012-10-31 13:12 · Score: 2
  
  Youngsters, forgetting the classics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiotimoline
4. Re:A still mainly unexplored genre by smugfunt · 2012-10-31 14:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The Endochronic Properties of Resublimted Thiotimoline by Isaac Asimov.
  A spoof chemistry paper which he told Campbell to publish pseudonymously in case it prejudice his upcoming thesis examination. Campbell used his real name, his examiners asked about it, and still gave him his doctorate.
5. Re:A still mainly unexplored genre by gstoddart · 2012-10-31 14:32 · Score: 2
  
  Satirical scientific articles are a field of literature ripe for expansion.
  I don't think it's so much satirical as a though experiment, albeit slightly bizarre.
  It reads more like he took a description of the environment, and said "OK, if we were to experience this, it could be because these things would have to be true".
  The material is fanciful, but what he's doing seems like he's doing solid math -- though, I confess, the math is mostly beyond me except in the abstract. But it reads more like Flatland and other things which try to describe Big Concepts with a little fun thrown in.
  
  Conversely, what is the probability that the imagination of a layperson in the 1920â(TM)s would be able to accidentally
  describe not just the effects of gravitational lensing but also the consequential anomalous relationship between lines,
  angles and areas in a curved space?
  Sounds much more like pointing out that there's some pretty accurate descriptions of some cool physics in Lovecraft.
  Or, he's really reaching. Like I said, the math is a little beyond me. :-P
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Mathematician or parapsychologist? by Horshu · 2012-10-31 12:12 · Score: 5, Funny

This is the point where his boss should tell him, "The purpose of science is to serve mankind. You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Dr. Tippett."
1. Re:Mathematician or parapsychologist? by 19thNervousBreakdown · 2012-10-31 13:23 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  It's a sad day when there's two people in the world who don't recognize a Ghostbusters quote :(
  
  --
  <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
2. Re:Mathematician or parapsychologist? by jaxtherat · 2012-10-31 13:24 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Way to miss the Ghostbusters quote dumbass.
  
  --
  http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
3. Re:Mathematician or parapsychologist? by EdIII · 2012-10-31 18:20 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  The best come back ever came from this movie:
  "Yes, it's true. This man has no dick" - Bill Murray.
Gods with pitchforks. by Anachragnome · 2012-10-31 12:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why the fuck would any self-respecting god need technology? I was always under the impression technology was humanity's attempts at mitigating our shortcomings as NON-Gods.
1. Re:Gods with pitchforks. by RanCossack · 2012-10-31 12:22 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  What does God need with a starship?
2. Re:Gods with pitchforks. by lexarius · 2012-10-31 12:48 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Keep in mind that most gods are not assumed to be omnipotent, except in a few monotheistic religions. Non-omnipotence implies that they have to obey the basic rules of whatever reality they inhabit, or at least some of them. A non-omnipotent god probably can't do instant teleportation through space. Maybe they can convert themselves into light and travel at light speed, but as far as we know you need to warp space to do better than that. Perhaps they can warp space with willpower alone, but that might be tiring over vast distances. It isn't unusual for a god to be portrayed as using a chariot or steed, so why not a ship? If it's easier for the god to build a warp drive and take a relaxing boat trip across the cosmos, why not? Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
3. Re:Gods with pitchforks. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-31 13:33 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Lovecraft's various creatures, including Cthulhu and others variously described as "gods", had extraterrestrial origins (eg. "from outer spheres"). Basically the idea was that they were ancient and vastly powerful extra-dimensional beings, not gods in the sense that you're thinking.
4. Re:Gods with pitchforks. by snadrus · 2012-10-31 13:51 · Score: 2
  
  I can build a brick house to completion with my bare hands and simple tools, but it's intensively tiring. So instead I use wisdom to find indirect ways to accomplish the same goal (getting a completed house). I'd assume anything more brilliant than I would do the same. Put this way, I'm starting to feel like an "indirect way" myself.
  
  --
  Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
5. Re:Gods with pitchforks. by guttentag · 2012-10-31 14:15 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Why the fuck would any self-respecting god need technology? I was always under the impression technology was humanity's attempts at mitigating our shortcomings as NON-Gods.
  First of all: Villagers use pitchforks. Gods use tridents. That being said, the trident is a tool. In theory, mythological gods used tools to do things so they wouldn't have to do things themselves. The most-commonly-used tools of the gods were people. If you have to do everything yourself, you're not a god, you're just that guy in the cubicle at the end of the row who doesn't understand shell scripting.
6. Re:Gods with pitchforks. by Empiric · 2012-10-31 14:18 · Score: 2
  
  Non-omnipotence implies that they have to obey the basic rules of whatever reality they inhabit, or at least some of them.
  
  Omnipotence generally implies this as well, with respect to the constraints of logical non-contradiction--on the basis of (in brief), if you object that a supposedly omnipotent God cannot, say, make a square circle, you have not in fact identified a limitation on omnipotence, rather, at base you have failed to use language meaningfully.
  
  --
  ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
7. Re:Gods with pitchforks. by maxwell+demon · 2012-10-31 21:16 · Score: 2
  
  Only gods which want to participate in the material world need it. Think of the material representation as an avatar. The god itself is outside the universe, but to act in the universe (as opposed to just affect it), the god needs an avatar inside the world, which is then bound to the laws of the world (which the god can, of course, tweak to its liking, e.g. by introducing exotic matter which doesn't otherwise exist, but the laws cannot be completely lifted because that would mean to destroy the world that is built on the rules).
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Why settle for the lesser evil? by stevegee58 · 2012-10-31 12:20 · Score: 5, Funny

Cthulhu 2012!
1. Re:Why settle for the lesser evil? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-31 12:27 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I demand to see Cthulhu's birth certificate.
2. Re:Why settle for the lesser evil? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-31 12:51 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I demand to see Cthulhu's Death certificate.
3. Re:Why settle for the lesser evil? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-31 12:51 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Everyone who views the birth certificate goes mad, so it is really hard to verify.
4. Re:Why settle for the lesser evil? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-31 12:59 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  He ain't dead, he's restin'. Remarkable tentacles on him.
5. Re:Why settle for the lesser evil? by staalmannen · 2012-10-31 19:16 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Anyone else noticed the similarities between tentacles and noodly appendages? The flying spaghetti monster - Chutulu's second coming?
6. Re:Why settle for the lesser evil? by narcc · 2012-10-31 21:39 · Score: 2
  
  A more scientific approach is to consider what the evidence tells you and then form a conclusion. A more scientific approach is to consider what the evidence tells you and then form a conclusion.
  It should be noted that the conclusion will often be "a conclusion cannot be formed", assuming a scientific approach.
  There's a lot of nonsense in the science cheerleader community -- non-scientific concepts like 'default position' (related to the above) do more harm than good. In their effort to defend science against some perceived threat or defend some ideological position, they've abandoned science, reason, and logic; they've become an even more dangerous threat to science than any creationist group could ever hope to be!
  Remember these three simple things: 1) Science has a finite scope 2) Science neither presumes nor tends toward truth. 3) A conclusion drawn exclusively or predominantly from the metaphysics upon which natural science is based does not make that conclusion scientific.
  Science depends upon constraint. Trying to expand science beyond its scope epistemologically or methodologically is far more dangerous than anything a few nuts with some bronze-age scribblings or an army of parade magazine quality science "journalists" could ever manage.
  
  --
  Required reading for internet skeptics
Fitted Sheets by ShakaUVM · 2012-10-31 12:20 · Score: 5, Funny

If you truly wish to understand non-Euclidean geometry, simply try putting those damn fitted sheets on a bed. No matter which way you rotate it, you always end up with the short side in your hands.
It is enough to drive a man insane.
1. Re:Fitted Sheets by oodaloop · 2012-10-31 12:24 · Score: 2
  
  That's why I always buy sheets with vertical stripes. As long as the stripes are going foot to head, instead of side to side, the sheet will always fit.
  
  --
  Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
2. Re:Fitted Sheets by SQLGuru · 2012-10-31 13:10 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  It's even worse when you try to figure out how to fold them.......
3. Re:Fitted Sheets by jgtg32a · 2012-11-01 00:20 · Score: 2
  
  Same with USB devices, those things have to be rotated at least 540 degrees before they will fit into a slot.
Not the kind of technology you are used to by Andy+Prough · 2012-10-31 12:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

What would a "God" really be? Someone with vastly higher intelligence, using technology that you can't comprehend. Everything they did would seem magical, mystical, miraculous. Since you couldn't even comprehend their world, all you would be able to do is make up myths and legends and tall tales to explain their "Godliness".
1. Re:Not the kind of technology you are used to by tycoex · 2012-10-31 13:01 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  The Goa'uld are not gods! :)
2. Re:Not the kind of technology you are used to by runeghost · 2012-10-31 13:07 · Score: 2
  
  What about a weakly-godlike entity?
Hmm... by tool462 · 2012-10-31 12:39 · Score: 2

As long as the exotic matter isn't made of midichlorians, we can still be friends.
1. Re:Hmm... by jd2112 · 2012-10-31 13:09 · Score: 2
  
  As long as the exotic matter isn't made of midichlorians, we can still be friends.
  This just in : Disney has bought out the. H.P. Lovecraft estate. A Star Wars/Marvel/Cthuluhu/Disney Princess animated film is rumored to be in production.
  
  --
  Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
2. Re:Hmm... by Grayhand · 2012-10-31 13:21 · Score: 2
  
  As long as the exotic matter isn't made of midichlorians, we can still be friends.
  This just in : Disney has bought out the. H.P. Lovecraft estate. A Star Wars/Marvel/Cthuluhu/Disney Princess animated film is rumored to be in production.
  Sorry it's all public domain. His aunts died years ago and the last issues over so shared ownership rights expired. The rights have been questionable for years since it was mostly August Derleth claiming he changed a number of stories and got them republished as collections. All that has expired and he's been dead a long time. Even Burrough's stuff is entering public domain. It's why they were able to make that cheesy A Princess of Mars film, I mean the cheapie one not the big budget cheesy film which Disney had in development for decades.
3. Re:Hmm... by gman003 · 2012-10-31 13:59 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Sorry it's all public domain.
  And since when has that stopped Disney from claiming "ownership" of something?
Just wondering about the tags.. by Sangui5 · 2012-10-31 12:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

..but HP?
Is the new printer lineup Lovecraftian? Has Meg Whitman been conducting dark rituals? Is Itanium powered by the souls of the innocent?
Wouldn't MS be more appropriate? I'm pretty sure IE is *actually* powered by the souls of the innocent, and there certainly is something evil about the entire OS lineup.
1. Re:Just wondering about the tags.. by tftp · 2012-10-31 15:08 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Is Itanium powered by the souls of the innocent?
  You cannot power anything with the souls of the innocent. There are too few of those to have commercial value.
2. Re:Just wondering about the tags.. by Shimbo · 2012-10-31 20:12 · Score: 2
  
  ..but HP?
  Is the new printer lineup Lovecraftian?
  No, just the drivers.
Any sufficiently advanced technology.. by caveat · 2012-10-31 13:04 · Score: 2

..is indistinguishable from magic, or divinity.

--

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Re:Bel-Shamharoth? by HalfFlat · 2012-10-31 17:55 · Score: 2

This, too, might be accommodated in a space of negative curvature: hyperbolic space admits a tiling by regular octagons.
Zermelo-Fraenkel-Cthulhu set theory by howlingfrog · 2012-10-31 18:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

Back in college, a friend and I were trying to figure out what could possibly make people go mad from the mere sight of Cthulhu. We decided it must have uncountably infinitely many tentacles. A mere countable infinity of tentacles could be visually comprehensible, so long as each one is half the size of its predecessor, or if they were arranged in a fractal tree structure of tentacles upon tentacles. But uncountably many tentacles would drive you insane at first sight.

--
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
1. Re:Zermelo-Fraenkel-Cthulhu set theory by HeckRuler · 2012-11-01 04:08 · Score: 2
  
  But there are a countable number of (visible) stars, it's just a large number. And the infinity of space is literally unobservable. It's just black. So you're not seeing an uncountably infinite number of anything up there.
  Just don't think too hard about it, otherwise you'll face something similar to the Total Perspective Vortex
Cthulhu printers... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-31 18:08 · Score: 2, Funny

So THAT'S why the printer ink runs out so quickly... all becomes clear.
1. Re:Cthulhu printers... by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · 2012-11-01 11:34 · Score: 2
  
  Also why reading the owner's manual drives people insane.
No, it's not Sci-Fi by wdef · 2012-10-31 20:13 · Score: 2

It's speculative inquiry and it's perfectly fine scientific activity. It's quite common in theoretical physics to imagine or concoct various system parameters - either reasonable or wild - and see where those assumptions lead. Einstein's choice of the GR field equations was in part an educated stab that turned out to work. Physics is full of ideas that we accept as ok but that began life as a guess.