PITTSBURGH — A proposed method for authenticating artist Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings does not hold up under scrutiny, a new analysis finds. What’s more, the analysis uncovered a new way to ...

"Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line." So writes acclaimed mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot ...

Pop music in the 1980s was full of weirdness, but no amount of Madonna or “The Safety Dance” will prepare you for what scientists recently found in a Michael McDonald song—fractals. Physicist Holger ...

Humans are visual creatures. Objects we call “beautiful” or “aesthetic” are a crucial part of our humanity. Even the oldest known examples of rock and cave art served aesthetic rather than utilitarian ...

You may not be able to define “fractal” — yet — but fractals are, in fact, everywhere. As you might expect from hearing her title, Hayley Brazier, Donald M. Kerr curator of natural history at the High ...

As Sigmund Freud made very clear, human beings are compelled to repeat patterns—the repetition compulsion. Patterns laid down early in life are propelled forward to recreate the familiar that can be ...

Jackson Pollock couldn’t possibly have been thinking of fractals when he started flinging and dripping paint from a stick onto canvas. After all, mathematicians didn’t develop the idea of a fractal ...