Aperiodic monotile.

Get your science fix here: research, quackery, activism and all the rest
Post Reply
User avatar
Boustrophedon
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2854
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 3:58 pm
Location: Lincolnshire Wolds

Aperiodic monotile.

Post by Boustrophedon » Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:24 pm

As reported in the New Scientist a group of mathematicians: David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers,Craig S. Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss, have claimed to have constructed an aperiodic tiling that uses just one shape of tile.

Paper here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.10798.pdf

This of course beats Penrose tiling which uses two shapes; the dart and the kite.
But to my mind there is just one small niggle, they use the tile and it's reflection. That to my mind is less pure than using congruent tiles without reflection. Certainly spoils it for me. Still it's an important result and really pretty.


1687244959229505550.jpg
1687244959229505550.jpg (91.24 KiB) Viewed 1329 times
Hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död.

User avatar
Grumble
Light of Blast
Posts: 4728
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:03 pm

Re: Aperiodic monotile.

Post by Grumble » Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:41 pm

And our very own Jaap hand a hand in it
viewtopic.php?p=145114#p145114
where once I used to scintillate
now I sin till ten past three

User avatar
Boustrophedon
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2854
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 3:58 pm
Location: Lincolnshire Wolds

Re: Aperiodic monotile.

Post by Boustrophedon » Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:46 pm

Grumble wrote:
Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:41 pm
And our very own Jaap hand a hand in it
viewtopic.php?p=145114#p145114
That's great. I did have a look to see if it had been posted already, didn't find it.
Hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död.

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2631
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: Aperiodic monotile.

Post by IvanV » Fri Mar 24, 2023 12:01 pm

I can imagine some poor mathematician bashing their head against either trying to prove there cannot be an aperiodic tiling with a single shape of tile (with a finite number of straight sides), counting the reflection as a different tile, or showing the counter-example.

I say finite number of sides, because odd things can happen when you go to the theoretical places beyond that. You could have tilings that change area according to how you arrange the "tiles", as happens in 3-d with the Banach-Tarski paradox.

User avatar
Boustrophedon
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2854
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 3:58 pm
Location: Lincolnshire Wolds

Re: Aperiodic monotile.

Post by Boustrophedon » Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:17 pm

And here we go, an aperiodic monotile without reflections.
Image


https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/spectre/
Hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död.

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2631
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: Aperiodic monotile.

Post by IvanV » Sun Jun 04, 2023 2:33 pm

Boustrophedon wrote:
Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:17 pm
And here we go, an aperiodic monotile without reflections.
Image
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/spectre/
Amazing. I had not imagined such a quick resolution of that question, given how long it has taken us to get from aperiodic tilings with more than one tile, to aperiodic tiling with one tile. And in fact they have found several - though through fairly simple modifications to the first one.

By drawing attention to the fact that the tile is asymmetric ("chiral"), it means the subject isn't closed yet. It leaves open the question of whether you could have an aperiodic monotile that is symmetric.

Post Reply