Nature is brimming with beautiful patterns, like the seemingly complex shapes of snowflakes, coastlines, clouds and seashells. But zoom in, and you'll see fractals, meaning the same, simple pattern ...

Maths and art go back a long way. And it’s easy to see why. Art likes patterns and mathematics is the catalogue of all possible patterns. Some of these patterns hang on walls in frames or are used for ...

Fractals are beautiful, but we wouldn’t want to live in one. If the universe is like a giant fractal – with matter always appearing in clusters nested inside clusters – that would be a serious blow to ...