Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

Quite literally: After a trip of 10 minutes inside this Mandelbrot fractal (be sure to check the HD version on Vimeo), the original image you saw would be “billions and billions” of times larger than the whole Universe. As the author, hd-fractals, explains:

“The final magnification is e.214. Want some perspective? A magnification of e.12 would increase the size of a particle to the same as the earths orbit! e.21 would make a particle look the same size as the milky way and e.42 would be equal to the universe. This zoom smashes all of them all away. If you were "actually" travelling into the fractal your speed would be faster than the speed of light.”

You can compare it to some actual zooms into hair, concrete, metal et al.

I found this gem via the always great Nerdcore, which also pointed to a previous zoom into the Mandelbrot set which “only” went to e.89, in 2008, with a maximum of 2,100,000,000 iterations.

Remember that these infinite and exquisite details emerge from the repeated iteration of the simple expression z_n+1 = z_n² + c. It’s the Mandelbrot set.

And there’s more! After the jump.

The homepage of hd-fractals showcased some other amazing works, including a video of the Mandelbulb, a representation of the Mandelbrot set in three dimensions, by Inigo Quilez:

And a Mandelbulb morph, also by Quilez: