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France's longest border is with Brazil (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (36 children)

Arnt most borders fractals so can any border be the largest?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (14 children)

considers

Well, they aren't fractal, that's for sure.

It is true that we could make borders more-closely-map to physical features, and that would increase the length somewhat.

And we can define borders however we want, so that's up to us.

But ultimately, matter is quantum, not continuous, so if we're going to link the definition of a border to some function of physical reality, I don't think that we can make a border arbitrarily long.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (10 children)

Coastlines are indeed fractals, and a similar argument could be made for any border defined by natural phenomena (so like, not the long straight US/Canada border).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Coastlines are not self repeating and they are fundamentally finite.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I believe they were referring to this, where technically a coast could be seen as similar to fractals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Literally from that page

The coastline paradox is often criticized because coastlines are inherently finite, real features in space, and, therefore, there is a quantifiable answer to their length.[17][19] The comparison to fractals, while useful as a metaphor to explain the problem, is criticized as not fully accurate, as coastlines are not self-repeating and are fundamentally finite.[17]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fractals are not necessarily self repeating, they just contain detail at arbitrarily small scales.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Which a physical space cannot fulfill

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fractals are not required to be self-repatiing. For example, the Mandelbrot set is a non-self repeating fractal pattern.

And please elaborate on how they are fundamentally finite.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Coastlines exist in the real world, they are by definition finite structures. You can only zoom in to them so far before the structure is no longer a coastline.