Gorgeous 3D Mandelbrot sets!

Check. This. Out.

You might think that's an alien spore, or a crystal of some kind. But it's actually what appears to be a rendering of a three-dimensional fractal! Fractals are very interesting. There are different ways to describe one, but one way to think of one is that it's a shape that looks the same no matter what magnification you use. You can double it, triple it, make it 10,876,432 times bigger, and the object still displays (more or less) the same features. The term fractal was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot, and there is an entire subclass of fractals named after him. They are seen in nature (and art, like here) quite a bit. Coastlines are fractal, as are -- seriously -- some kinds of broccoli. However, fractals are generally calculated in two dimensions. What's new here is that the fractal pattern has now been calculated in three dimensions! ...