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France's longest border is with Brazil (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Coastlines are indeed fractals, and a similar argument could be made for any border defined by natural phenomena (so like, not the long straight US/Canada border).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Coastlines are not self repeating and they are fundamentally finite.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I believe they were referring to this, where technically a coast could be seen as similar to fractals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Literally from that page

The coastline paradox is often criticized because coastlines are inherently finite, real features in space, and, therefore, there is a quantifiable answer to their length.[17][19] The comparison to fractals, while useful as a metaphor to explain the problem, is criticized as not fully accurate, as coastlines are not self-repeating and are fundamentally finite.[17]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fractals are not necessarily self repeating, they just contain detail at arbitrarily small scales.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Which a physical space cannot fulfill

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fractals are not required to be self-repatiing. For example, the Mandelbrot set is a non-self repeating fractal pattern.

And please elaborate on how they are fundamentally finite.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Coastlines exist in the real world, they are by definition finite structures. You can only zoom in to them so far before the structure is no longer a coastline.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thats making a lot of assumptions about quantum physics

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

An atom is not a coastline, even if it is a piece of one