this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The fun starts when you study quaternions

i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = ijk = −1

[–] pticrix@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

(...I think you may have gotten whooshed...)

[–] HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hehe, maybe a little, but wanted to share just in case someone didn't know :3

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I clicked your link, I barely made it out of highschool so I have no idea what any of it means, but I like reading things I shouldn't understand anyway, sometines it's so interesting even without understanding.

So I thank you!

[–] Klear@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Quaternions are the closest we get to lovecraftian horror in real life.

Four dimensional and mostly imaginary, they were carved into a stone bridge by a crazy mathematician in a fit of madness, Lord Kelvin called them "unmixed evil", and the Mad Hatter from Alice may have been inspired by them.

Also they have been a curiosity at best for a long time, despite the efforts of a ~~secret~~ Quaternion Society, but they suddenly blew up in usefulness in modern times as they happen to be an easy and fast way for computers to describe rotations in 3D space, so they're everywhere.

Yeah, lovecraftian as shit.

[–] codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It gets worse actually. You can define a number system using any power of 2 amount of i-like units in a similar relationship to quaternions using the Cayley-Dickson construction

Fascinatingly, you lose some property of the algebra at each step. Quaternions aren't commutative: ABC != CBA. Octonians aren't associative: (AB)C != A(BC). Once you get into 16 i's with subscripts, it really gets crazy.

(Also, I just got the joke. Damnit @HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone your serious answer threw me off!)

[–] HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hehe, yeah, the joke was too good :P

[–] Klear@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Maybe a bit too complex for its own good.

[–] serenissi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

this isn't real