The Australian Supercomputer Graphics Exhibition and First International Conchology Conference

ART, SCIENCE F()Rl :1\1 The Australian Supercomputer Graphics Exhibition and First International Conchology Conference Chris Illert In January 1995, the Tweed Shire, on Australia's east coast, hosted a unique international conference and supercomputer graphics exhibition. Mathematicians , computer artists and shell lovers flocked to the Tyalgum Tops Convention Center inside the world's largest shield volcano (20 km diameter) to talk mathematics and see the latest supercomputer images of shells growing in interesting shapes and developing murex-like spikes, in real time, on TV screens. In these sped-up representations of natural processes, shells grew from juveniles to adults in just a few minutes and in full digital color [I]. In response to an international competition , computer scientists and artists worldwide submitted computer-generated images of bioforms and seashells (movies as well as still images) for public display at the Griffith Fine Art Gallery in nearby Murwillumbah, where they were seen by tens of thousands of people during the course of the exhibition , which was held at the height of the nearby Gold Coast tourism season. During the course of this week-long conference and exhibition, the Tweed Shire Council held an official Civic Reception welcoming delegates to the shire, and Mayor Councillor Max Boyd officially opened and dedicated the new "Santilli Hall" at a nearby art-center campus in the presence of 100 or so dignitaries, international visitors and media representatives [2]. What was all this fuss about? Well, these events were organized by the Australian Division of the worldwide Institute for Basic Research in commemoration of the recent development of a powerful new isoEuclidean mathematics which underlies several entirely new fields of science, including Theoretical Conchology [3]. The big mathematical discovery is that the basic laws of physics, as we know them, are essentially invariant under the Chris Illert, Institute for Bask Research (Australian Division ), 2/3 Birch Crescent, East Corrimal, NSW 2518, Australia. assumption that our universe is six-dimensional ("isoEuclidean") instead of three-dimensional ("Euclidean"). Moreover , even familiar shapes such as seashells are solutions to a problem that cannot be fully stated in less than six dimensions . In fact, as one speaker at the conference explained, if known biological shells were forced to grow in threedimensional Euclidean space, they would crack and explode as bombs do. Just as our number system is incomplete without complex numbers, so too is Euclidean space only a subset of a more general isoEuclidean space. This means that the universe is geometrically more complex than was initially thought. The things we perceive in our world are analogous to mere three-dimensional "shadows" of essentially sixdimensional objects. It happens that seashells are the first convincing examples of six-dimensional objects for which sufficiently advanced mathematical equations have been derived . As naturally occurring biological shells are the end product of a cosmic simulation that has been going on for half a billion years in the oceans of our planet, they might reasonably be expected to possess geometrically nontrivial shapes worthy of the most advanced mathematical analysis. Thus, conflicting theorems in isoEuclidean geometry were resolved at the conference by theoreticians rummaging through a shell cupboard and triumphantly emerging with specimens in their hands. It was also explained at the conference that protein molecules scroll and roll up into balls in a fashion requiring formulation in a six-dimensional space [4]. Physicists, too, have used isoEuclidean ("seashell") mathematics to model the chromosphere of quasars, Cooper Pairing in superconductors, the proton-proton fireball [5], and even time travel [6]. Experiments have already been suggested for the next NASA probe to Jupiter to test subtle gravitational and temporal effects implied by the new mathematics. This gives us some idea of why an international conference on the topic was organized in Australia in January, why a follow-up conference will be held in Italy in August and why supercomputers around the world have been running hot ever since publication of a simulation of the extinct fossil shell Nipponites mirabilis [7], which, despite its apparently serpentine meandering , may actually be a "straight line" (geodesic) in generalized six-dimensional coordinates. One point to be found in all ofthis is that applied scientists, guided in their modeling by the...