Another important fact

[melannen]

Newest thing I have learned from my new collection of RSS feeds, via improbableresearch_feed:

There is a famous and important mathematical problem called The Hairy Ball Theorem.*

My question is this: I spent my teenage years as a hardcore math geek - I can still sing verses of the Astronomer's Drinking Song by heart - and have also read an absolute TON of John/Rodney fic and Newt/Hermann fic and Bruce/Tony fic, and yet I have never heard of this before. (In fact there are NO results on google search of AO3 for the phrase "hairy ball theorem". How??? Slash fandom, pick up your slack!)


*Best explained as the mathematical proof that you can't comb a hairy ball flat without at least one cowlick somewhere on it.

Comments

[schneefink]

I'm particularly disappointed in SGA fandom for this. SGA porn taught me about the Banach-Tarski paradox, but not about something called the Hairy Ball theorem, strange.

[ratcreature]

Yeah. It is especially odd considering the usual fandom obsession with Sheppard's hair and its cowlicks, so it would have been a very natural fit in several ways.

[melannen]

Exactly! It's a mathematical problem about messy hair that's called the "Hairy Ball Theorem", how could John/Rodney fandom have passed it up? That's like all their favorite things at once.

[melannen]

I know, right?

Although almost as disappointed in the Pac Rim fandom, since one of the characters is a working topologist, and also it has a less... suggestive name in Europe, so the two of them could fight over which name to use. If I ever finish my current Pac Rim fic, I guess it's going to have to involve Newt forcing Hermann to say the phrase "Hairy Ball" in mixed company at least once.

[jesse_the_k]

This is a crucial rupture in the space-time-slash-fabric!

[melannen]

Hairy ball's in the space-time continuum!

[seekingferret]

Dunno, I definitely learned about it from a mathematician at some point. And considered including it in That One Fic with the Topology, my Tom Swift/Henry Reed crossover, but wasn't able to make it make sense. It wasn't a very porny topology story.

[melannen]

It seems like the kind of thing I would have learned somewhere, but it also seems like the kind of thing that would have stuck in my memory if I had. I know I was aware of the result of the theorem. Maybe I was young enough when I learned it that nobody used that name for it.

[espresso_addict]

I am often amused by the fact my white knowledge appears to diverge significantly from nearly everyone else's.