3 ms·

I’m not sure I agree with you on this. I once read that pure maths tends to preceed applied maths by about 50 years. I don’t know how true it is, but if the pra

I’m not sure I agree with you on this. I once read that pure maths tends to preceed applied maths by about 50 years. I don’t know how true it is, but if the practitioners aren’t constantly chasing some ideal version of reality, I’m not sure we would get the same major advances in industry. I think you may also have a dated idea as to ‘real world equivalent’. We’re in a very interesting time for meta materials. Things like negative index of refraction was pure science fiction 20 years ago, but today we can make multilayered substances that behave as though they have a negative index. Which is to say, that if we can make it, it now has a real world equivalent. Even your example of a wire ignores the enormous amount of materials processing necessary to produce wire. Wire was unimaginable maybe as recently as 10k years ago.

function_seven 8y ago
I'm on the fence between you two. On one hand, it's true that missing pieces in a mathematical symmetry often motivate us to go find the real-world thing we haven't observed. On the other hand, your example of a multi-layered substance that exhibits negative refraction does seem like "cheating". We can make transistors by layering different doped silicone variants together, but it's not considered a fundamental electrical component. If memristors require the same amount of engineering, are they "natural"? What would be fascinating is, what if the missing puzzle piece implies an exotic shaping of "just" wire that would act as a memristor? Some crazy contortion like the magnetic field designs I've seen for containing fusion reactions.