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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

You know how Saturn's North Pole is a hexagon? It wouldn't surprise me if someday we find some shape to the universe that isn't smoothly circular because of some fundamental force that we don't understand yet. I'd vote for a hexagon, since if you stack a bunch of circles, that's the shape you get (the other circles being other universes). Plus bees are probably interdimensional beings.

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Every now and then I read some far-out scientific paper, and I'm pretty sure it's real, but I get fascinated with the question of how I really know that it's not pseudo-science by some crank.

Example:

"In this section, we investigate the band structures of plasmonic ribbons with four types of boundary conditions, i.e. zigzag, bearded zigzag, armchair, and bearded armchair"

(from "The existence of topological edge states in honeycomb plasmonic lattices")

A real crank would try to use professional-sounding language, only someone completely secure in their field would call sometime a "bearded armchair." ;)

naming things is hard.

I now have this mental image of the author sat there for three hours trying to come up with a name, and then just exploding with "fuckit! I don't care what it's called! It doesn't matter. I was sat in an armchair when I thought of it, so armchair it is! If they can have strange quarks, I can have armchairs"

A real smart crank is aware of this and because he only spends time on cranking this was the riddle he made. Not many academics would be confident enough to call this man on his bullshit.

Physicists are amazing in coming up with names, from WIMPs (Weakly interacting massive particles) to something like Nuclear Pasta[1], with all sorts of culinary phases.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta#Phases

My personal favourite is the 'barn', an area approximately the size of the face of a uranium nucleus, invented to covertly describe a large-ish target size to hit (the 'broad side of a barn') with a particle beam.

Maybe, I'm guessing, when you're at such a niche area of science like topological edge states in honeycomb plasmonic lattices you've got to double back to calling things simple shit in name-pairs just to keep everyone onboard.

It's been shown that spherical cow, not bees, is homeomorphic to the Universe [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow#/media/File:Spot_...

A cow is homeomorphic to a torus due to the digestive system.

People too. I'm a donut.

You're probably more a triple torus.

Way more than triple, considering things like nephrons in kidneys

We can limit our precision here for more fun :)

Seven holed donut due to extra holes of nostrils and tearducts.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=egEraZP9yXQ

How many of those go all the way through your body?

Not all of them but they don't need to; they just need to be topgraphically holey, which is why a teacup and a donut share the same number of holes for example.

Right, and the reason a teacup and a donut have the same number of holes is because the former has a handle. Holes that don’t go all the way through don’t count.

There is plenty of holes in the human body that go all the way through (for example the ducts in your eyes going towards your nasal cavity as well as various parts of said nasal cavity).

Fair enough, I guess we’re holey toruses ;)

> Plus bees are probably interdimensional beings.

You misspelled "mice".

> I'd vote for a hexagon, since if you stack a bunch of circles, that's the shape you get

I can't imagine that, do you have a link to explain it or is it a joke?

Here you go! This explains it well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-packing_of_equal_spheres

Imagine stacking marbles. They'll naturally fall into a hexagonal pattern as the most likely way of naturally stacking.

"pack" might have been a more appropriate term than "stack". Tightly packed circles (in 2d) form a hex grid.

More relevant, though, might be the shapes you get when packing spheres: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_dodecahedral_honeyco...

Your vote is correct. You're not the only one voting hexagonal: https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library...

Aren't those Saturnian hexagons blue? Hyperintelligent shades of the colour blue, I reckon.

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