Fractal Geography

Scientists catalog the "fractalness" of more than 130,000 islands

- —Alex Music

IN 1967 MATHEMATICIAN Benoit Mandelbrot observed that the coastline of Great Britain is impossible to measure—its perimeter gets longer the more closely you measure it. At that point he was eight years away from coining the term "fractal": a shape containing smaller parts similar in shape to the larger whole that become apparent as you zoom in, creating an infinite, and infinitely complex, repeated pattern. Now the so-called coastline paradox he observed is one of many known examples of fractals in Earth's geography. But recent work has found that coastlines may actually be far less fractal than thought.

The research, published on the preprint server arXiv.org and accepted in