The picture is a work of art through abstract mathematics
known as a fractal ( meaning irregular in latin ) - capable of generating
and interpreting structures the complexity and beauty of which some rival
and some akin to that of nature's own.
Trees are not cylinders, insects are not spheres, mountains
are not cones, leaves are not circles nor does lightning travel in a straight
line. More generally many patterns of nature are so irregular and fragmented,
that, compared with Euclidian geometry.
Responding to the challenge of a more refined geometry
of nature, Prof. Benoit B. Mandelbrot developed fractals in the 1970s.
A closer look at the picture will reveal that the degree of their irregularity
and/or fragmentation is identical at all scales (this is the case with
a large number of natural objects).
Complicated it undoubtedly is; yet it is generated by
a rule of remarkable simplicity. When his first computer pictures began
to emerge, Prof. Mandelbrot could not believe that such simplicity would
lead to a complexity of this height and was under the impression that the
pattern was a result of a computer malfunction!