[HN Gopher] Mathematicians discover shape that can tile a wall a...
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       Mathematicians discover shape that can tile a wall and never repeat
        
       Author : iamben
       Score  : 423 points
       Date   : 2023-03-23 12:33 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
        
       | sys42590 wrote:
       | So it would be possible to make a new tiling for Tatham's Loopy
       | puzzle [0] that would surely look nice.
       | 
       | [0]:
       | https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/loop...
        
       | 6nf wrote:
       | Flipping the shape is cheating imo. Might as well use Penrose for
       | any actual tile work.
        
       | bassrattle wrote:
       | I'd really like to see this applied to 3D world modeling. If a
       | landscape were tiled with a textured material in this way,
       | perhaps it would look more natural.
        
       | andrethegiant wrote:
       | Oh shit new shape just dropped
        
       | brobdingnagians wrote:
       | Opportunity for a startup to start selling these, however niche
       | that might be...
        
         | hgsgm wrote:
         | Look for it at Cherry Arbor Design
         | https://cherryarbordesign.com/collections/all
        
       | xhkkffbf wrote:
       | A wall? How about a floor? I wanted to cover my kitchen in
       | Penrose tiles but they didn't seem to be available. Anyone know
       | where to get some?
        
       | cwmoore wrote:
       | Are there numeric indexes for locations in an aperiodic monotile
       | covering a plane such as there are for the xyz in a tiled web
       | map?
        
       | 1MachineElf wrote:
       | I wonder what applications there are for this in video games.
       | Many games that attempt to show the outside world often suffer
       | from repeating patterns in things like terrain, which would never
       | happen in real life. Everything from 2D isometric games like
       | Command & Conquer to 3D open worlds like Skyrim have this
       | problem. Could that problem be solved by tile shapes that never
       | produce repeating patterns?
        
         | cadooo wrote:
         | My immediate thought was how soon do I see this in a board
         | game. Hexs are often used to create the game board. This could
         | add a lot of variability to board setup.
        
         | robinsonb5 wrote:
         | Similarly, I found myself wondering about applications in
         | halftone patterns for printing.
        
         | TinkersW wrote:
         | There are already techniques for removing the repeating
         | textures(sometimes this is called texture bombing). Maybe this
         | can be used to improve them, but only if it can be cheaply
         | calculated on the fly.
        
         | wetmore wrote:
         | Preventing texture repetition is definitely one area you'll see
         | techniques like this, e.g. via Wang tilings. Here is another
         | example: https://iquilezles.org/articles/texturerepetition/
        
           | 1MachineElf wrote:
           | Fascinating article and code examples. Thanks for the link.
        
       | patrickwalton wrote:
       | I would love this, but also it would be way more expensive to
       | tile, because you can't manufacture a consistent sheet of tiles.
       | No two sheets would be alike!
        
       | mnw21cam wrote:
       | Can someone ELI5 why this is different from Penrose tiling?
        
         | timmg wrote:
         | As I understand it: they found a _single_ shape. Where existing
         | Penrose tilings were composed of two (or more) shapes.
        
           | phkahler wrote:
           | But in one sense this is actually 2 shapes that are mirror
           | images. It's still really cool, but I don't think it is
           | ultimately what we've been looking for. As proof that it's
           | not, we all know that a paper presenting one that doesn't
           | need its mirror image to tile the plane aperiodically would
           | still be a big dea.
        
           | pohl wrote:
           | _...they found a single shape_
           | 
           | Kind of, though, right? One could also look at it as they've
           | found two shapes that happen to be reflections of each other.
        
             | Jarmsy wrote:
             | Rigid transformations of a single shape
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigid_transformation
        
           | dekhn wrote:
           | It's not really a single shape since the tiling contains the
           | shape's reflection which is normally considered a different
           | shape since its handedness changes.
        
         | sojuz151 wrote:
         | It is just a single tile type, not two
        
           | phkahler wrote:
           | The two Penrose tiles are also an affine transformation of
           | each other.
        
             | OscarCunningham wrote:
             | I don't think they can be if you want to enforce the
             | matching rules using the tile's shape.
        
               | hgsgm wrote:
               | > matching rules using the tile's shape.
               | 
               | That excludes affine transformation.
        
             | Jarmsy wrote:
             | Whereas in this new tiling there's a single shape and its
             | _rigid_ transformations.
        
         | lsaferite wrote:
         | That's covered in the article.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | ggrelet wrote:
           | It has a paywall.
        
             | schiffern wrote:
             | https://archive.is/RW7Wy
        
             | jlund-molfese wrote:
             | But almost every HN post to pay-walled content includes an
             | archive.is link to bypass the paywall.
        
             | lsaferite wrote:
             | They didn't indicate they couldn't read the article due to
             | a paywall. They just asked for an ELI5 on something that's
             | covered in the 4th paragraph of the article. My reaction
             | would be different if you said you couldn't read the
             | article and asked the same question.
        
       | nashashmi wrote:
       | somewhere in this arrangement of tiles is a picture of the world.
       | 
       | --veritasium
        
         | hgsgm wrote:
         | Is the proven? Aperiodic is not the same as "full measure".
         | 
         | 101001000100001... is aperiodic but doesn't contain every
         | finite string.
         | 
         | But you could say that becaus it contains an infinite set of
         | distinct finite substrings, it can be put in bijection with any
         | countable set of objects. That's not a "picture" in common
         | parlance, via any sort of structured encoding, it's just an
         | index.
        
       | rascul wrote:
       | Might be interesting to consider if/when such tiles are available
       | for purchase.
        
         | bitterlesson wrote:
         | If you have access to a laser cutter, you can make them out of
         | wood or acrylic. You may find a laser cutter at your local
         | library or maker space. I'd be happy to make tiles for you at
         | the cost of materials and shipping.
        
       | bookofjoe wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/RW7Wy
        
       | EGreg wrote:
       | So the Wang hypothesis was disproven, then?
        
       | snowram wrote:
       | Sounds like the start of BLIT by David Langford.
        
       | tagami wrote:
       | On an infinite plane, math is telling us that there is no
       | pattern. Is this correct?
        
       | DFHippie wrote:
       | Somebody needs to manufacture a cookie cutter in this shape.
        
       | shireboy wrote:
       | I'm confused - I see multiple repeating patterns. three light
       | blue hats in triangle around dark blue. grey boomerang pattern.
       | two white tiles with same rotation and layout. I'm sure I
       | misunderstand what is meant by "pattern that never repeats", but
       | please dumb this down for me.
        
         | bqmjjx0kac wrote:
         | The claim is that this tesselation is aperiodic, meaning that
         | the entire pattern does not have translational symmetry.
        
         | pfortuny wrote:
         | Whatever the size of a pattern you find, you cannot tile the
         | plane with _translations_ (just translations) using that
         | pattern: you need to rotate it. The definition is just that.
         | 
         | So, there are "patterns" (as a matter of fact, the elementary
         | tile is repeated infinitely on the tiling) but you cannot fill
         | the plane with mere translations of one.
         | 
         | See:
         | https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m308-02b/projects...
        
         | taneq wrote:
         | It only repeats for a little bit.
        
         | wccrawford wrote:
         | It looks to me like it repeats in 1 direction pretty quickly,
         | but in other directions doesn't repeat at all... At least, as
         | far as I can tell from the samples given.
        
         | jsd1982 wrote:
         | I was about to ask the same question but it appears the repeats
         | are not exactly identical at the edges.
         | 
         | Still, can one prove this is aperiodic from geometry alone? It
         | seems rather difficult to actually prove that fact. Feels
         | intuitive that there must be a period somewhere, however large
         | it may be, on the infinite 2D plane.
        
           | HelloNurse wrote:
           | For most sets of shapes a periodic tiling is possible, but by
           | no means guaranteed.
           | 
           | For example, consider rectangles with sides of 1 and 3 units:
           | they can cover the plane periodically (e.g. in a simple
           | rectangular grid), but also aperiodically, because you can
           | form a square grid of square 3 by 3 units "metatiles", each
           | encoding one bit of information in the vertical or horizontal
           | orientation of the narrow rectangles; then it's easy to break
           | symmetry by orienting metatiles so that for all integers m
           | and n some metatile differs from the metatile m rows and n
           | columns away, so the period cannot be m rows and n columns.
        
         | didericis wrote:
         | I'm assuming the infinite sequence of segments along a straight
         | vertical line at each "x-coordinate" (not sure how to say this,
         | but you can see vertical lines made of blocks, mean those) were
         | proved to be unique and non repeating
        
         | mbi wrote:
         | "An aperiodic tiling is a non-periodic tiling with the
         | additional property that it does not contain arbitrarily large
         | periodic regions or patches" [1]
         | 
         | So, it has "islands" of repenting combinations of tiles, but
         | these islands do not repeat / translate in a regular way.
         | 
         | 1: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Aperiodic_tiling
        
         | msm_ wrote:
         | For example, you can't replace these tiles with just
         | rectangles. For regular shapes you can, for example if you tile
         | your bathroom with squares there will be a repeating 2x2 square
         | pattern too. Similarly, hexagons and triangles can be replaced
         | with rectangular tiles (where every tile is the same). You
         | can't do this for this pattern.
        
         | sophacles wrote:
         | Those configurations appear often, but they don't appear with a
         | period. Look at a chessboard.. i can make it out of individual
         | black and white tiles, or out of pre-assembled units of 1 white
         | and one black tile (or a strip of length 4 or squares of size
         | 4, etc). I can make a chess board by grouping the base units
         | into a pattern, then only using that pattern. I can put that
         | pattern on a wheel and roll it along a surface forever to get
         | an infinite chessboard pattern.
         | 
         | There's not a way to do that sort of grouping for these tiles.
         | 
         | Compare pi. I can find the numbers representing my name in
         | ascii an infinite number of times in the digits of pi, but if i
         | find it once, there's no information in where to find it again,
         | i can't just move forward n digits to find it, then another n
         | digits to find it again, and ao on.
        
           | paulrpotts wrote:
           | Thank you for explaining "aperiodic" in a way that makes
           | sense to non-geometers!
        
         | OscarCunningham wrote:
         | If you were to make two copies of the pattern and superimpose
         | them on each other, they would never match perfectly no matter
         | how you rotated them and shifted them around.
         | 
         | However, they might match in small patches, just never across
         | the entire infinite plane.
        
           | fsckboy wrote:
           | wait, you must mean if you created a copy on top of another
           | copy, they would match like that, but there's no combination
           | of shifting, rotation, mirroring, etc that would also match?
           | (unless it you shifted it back to the starting orientation)
           | 
           | cuz it would be mind blowing if you made a copy and it wasn't
           | a copy... pauli whackamole exclusion tiling
        
       | uptownfunk wrote:
       | https://archive.is/RW7Wy
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | It's based on a sorta chunkified kisrhombille tiling (which is
       | pretty sane). Which is based on 1-2-sqrt3 triangles. (Which are
       | deeply humdrum).
       | 
       | So we have a serious "infinite chaos out of plain order"
       | situation here. Which I call impressive.
       | 
       | We have like 10 different chaoses, depending on how you do your
       | first tile. What would a superposition look like?
       | 
       | And it's pretty easy to organize, given that it's based on the
       | chunkykisrhombille.
       | 
       | Hmmm. What powers would it give us, bigstructurewise?
        
       | aliljet wrote:
       | What a fantastically enjoyable read. I really want to understand
       | how this question arises and what's actually being tested and
       | invented in coming to the solution to this. And, side note, this
       | is absolutely going to be the strategy I use to paint one of my
       | office walls.
        
       | bitsinthesky wrote:
       | Now, how many colors would you need so that no two adjacent
       | regions have the same color?
        
         | thefringthing wrote:
         | All four, since it's fairly easy to find an odd wheel in the
         | tiling.
        
       | pmayrgundter wrote:
       | That suggests that the layout at some radius R in the distance is
       | unpredictable without "running" it, in the Wolfram computational-
       | irreducible sense.
       | 
       | They say they have "a new kind of geometric incommensurability
       | argument", and there are many statements about the related
       | undecidability of related tiling classes.. but not really
       | grokking this.
       | 
       | Anyone know?
        
       | hooverd wrote:
       | Floor installers HATE this one simple shape!
        
       | OJFord wrote:
       | Just the one? I have no idea how this is described
       | mathematically, but just looking at the image in the article, the
       | shape spans three hexagons, comprising 2/6 sectors of two of them
       | and 4/6 of the third. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but
       | it seems like it 'ought' to scale to larger (or at least some
       | larger) polygons, or number of them spanned, even excluding
       | trivial multiples (or 6/6 covered ones inserted in the middle)
       | that are effectively the same shape.
        
         | Someone wrote:
         | There probably are countless others, but this is the first that
         | we know of.
         | 
         | And I wouldn't know whether trivial multiples that still tile
         | the plane non-periodically exist. Once you pick a multiple,
         | even the claim that any of these basic structures in the plane
         | is part of the multiple you picked doesn't seem to have an
         | obvious, trivial (1) proof to me, let alone the additional
         | requirement that you can find non-overlapping ones.
         | 
         | (1) I'm trying, likely unsuccessfully, to dodge the problem of
         | triviality in mathematics
         | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triviality_(mathematics)) here
        
           | odgaus wrote:
           | On their project page [1] they even mention that there is a
           | (infinite) family of shapes
           | 
           | >> The hat is one member of a continuous family of shapes
           | that are all aperiodic, and that all tile the plane in the
           | same way.
           | 
           | [1] https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/hat/
        
         | dclowd9901 wrote:
         | From a maths standpoint, I'm curious what the analogy to
         | numbers is. Would this tile be like an irrational number? A
         | prime number? But in 2d space?
        
           | hgsgm wrote:
           | In 1D you can't have a single shape tile aperiodically, since
           | there is no room for variation.
           | 
           | You could make a 2D diagram of the integers with they prime
           | factorizations, which is aperiodic, but nearly periodic, but
           | requires an infinite set of different "tiles".
           | 
           | Perhaps you could take an irrational or transcendebtal
           | number, and take its multiples or powers mod 1, to get an
           | aperiodic nearly periodic sequence.
        
         | penteract wrote:
         | In the paper(linked in other comments), they say it's part of a
         | family of such tiles which can be generated by changing some of
         | the edge lengths.
        
       | justinator wrote:
       | Something tells me if one was to look closely you'd find this
       | tile in Clark Richert's work, probably while he was living in an
       | artist commune in South Colorado in the 60's (like they did with
       | the Penrose Tile, which he got sued for - and won, since he
       | showed prior art).
       | 
       | https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Clark+Richert%22+Art&tbm=...
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | That is a seriously chewed cookie.
        
       | ubj wrote:
       | > Until now, it wasn't even clear whether such a single shape,
       | known as an einstein (from the German "ein stein" or "one
       | stone"), could even exist.
       | 
       | The actual topic of the article was impressive, but this little
       | fact about the meaning of "ein stein" was pretty interesting as
       | well. TIL.
        
         | wongarsu wrote:
         | Then you might also like Spielberg being German for "play
         | mountain" or "game mountain", Adelson being German for "son of
         | nobility" (though the son ending is more common in Nordic
         | countries, the meaning is likely the same), Zuckerberg being
         | German for "sugar mountain", Rosenberg being German for "rose
         | mountain" or Friedman being old German for "peaceful man" or
         | "protecting man".
        
         | xdennis wrote:
         | Also, it's pronounced neither "steen" nor "stayn", but "shtayn"
         | or /StaIn/ in IPA.
         | 
         | (I was once hearing someone talk about privacy and how people
         | like Tsucabuc are destroying it. I never heard about him but
         | apparently he is one of the owners of a large social media
         | company. Then he mentioned Facebook and I realized he was
         | pronouncing Zuckerberg in German.)
        
         | chaxor wrote:
         | Useful to remember when someone says you're 'dumb as a rock'
        
           | wussboy wrote:
           | I suppose you'd need to respond with, "Which rock?
           | Specifically."
        
       | kzrdude wrote:
       | Penrose tilings have 5- or 10-fold symmetry right, what does this
       | have? Maybe triangular symmetry? In their coloring I see lots of
       | three-studded shuriken-like shapes.
        
         | OscarCunningham wrote:
         | This colouring makes the 3-fold symmetry more visible:
         | https://mathstodon.xyz/@Danpiker/110062396666001681
        
           | hgsgm wrote:
           | It's obviously hexagonal (which includes triangular) just by
           | looking at the tiles and the angles of the edges.
        
       | satvikpendem wrote:
       | There's a great Veritasium video about aperiodic tiling:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48sCx-wBs34
        
       | LorenDB wrote:
       | In the second image, the tiles look like West Virginia.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | I notice that each tile has 5 or 6 neighbors. This reminds me of
       | "football" tiling[1] so I wonder how would this hat tiling look
       | on non-euclidean geometry, e.g. on a spehere
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_of_trun...
        
       | beeforpork wrote:
       | Definitely nice for bathroom tiles! Staring at the wall while
       | doing your business and failing to find a repeating pattern --
       | wonderful!
        
         | scythe wrote:
         | The unique feature of the new tile isn't that it will tile
         | aperiodically. It's that it will _only_ tile aperiodically. If
         | you just want an aperiodic tiling, you can achieve it with 2x1
         | rectangles. There 's a big list of such patterns here:
         | 
         | https://tilings.math.uni-bielefeld.de/
         | 
         | examples:
         | 
         | https://tilings.math.uni-bielefeld.de/substitution/domino-va...
         | 
         | https://tilings.math.uni-bielefeld.de/substitution/tetris/
        
           | remram wrote:
           | Thanks for posting this. It should be higher.
           | 
           | I can't believe NewScientist left that out of their headline.
        
           | Asooka wrote:
           | >Bielefeld university
           | 
           | I'm not clicking that, I don't trust I'll be able to come
           | back.
        
             | teach wrote:
             | For the downvoters, I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be
             | a veiled reference to the
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_conspiracy
        
               | kzrdude wrote:
               | I've heard of this injoke a lot, but it doesn't seem to
               | have any real core of fun to it, it's just interesting
               | because it's an injoke?
        
               | janfoeh wrote:
               | It is the earliest German bit of net culture to take an
               | offramp from the information superhighway into regular
               | culture - at least the earliest I know of. Maybe that
               | gives it its staying power, humorous value aside.
        
               | mandmandam wrote:
               | [dead]
        
         | asteroidz wrote:
         | Who needs a never-ending smartphone feed if you can have a
         | never-ending tile pattern to gaze upon!
        
         | bell-cot wrote:
         | If I recall (previously-submitted article -
         | https://cp4space.hatsya.com/2023/03/21/aperiodic-monotile/ ),
         | the shape has to be flipped upside down some fraction of the
         | time. So you'd either need two tile shapes for a real bathroom,
         | or your tiles would be a compromise between "both faces are
         | easily cleaned" and "both faces stick firmly to the mortar".
        
           | Psychlist wrote:
           | Having a white tile and a blue tile would be fine, though.
           | I'm really tempted by this, but I think I should start by
           | tiling the garage floor or something rather than my whole
           | living area.
        
           | bryan0 wrote:
           | > The ratio of unreflected to reflected tiles is ph^4 : 1
           | 
           | I just love this
        
         | kossTKR wrote:
         | Cool, but for some reason i find it pretty hard to look at?
        
           | jtms wrote:
           | stop looking at it :)
        
         | gfd wrote:
         | Sounds like a pretty tough job due to the lack of pattern.
         | Either you have to follow a template or you run the risk of
         | randomly tiling something that can't actually be extended
         | further.
        
           | dclowd9901 wrote:
           | The tiles seem like they can only join at one spot to one
           | spot so I don't think it would even be possible to lay them
           | incorrectly unless you straight were jamming incorrect sides
           | together.
        
             | zokier wrote:
             | > First we produce a list of possible neighbours of the hat
             | polykite in a tiling. There are 58 possible neighbours when
             | we only require such a neighbour not to intersect the
             | original polykite; these are shown in Figure B.1, with that
             | original polykite shaded. The first 41 of these neighbours
             | remain in consideration for the enumeration of 1-patches.
             | The final 17 are immediately eliminated (in the order
             | shown) because they cannot be extended to a tiling: either
             | there is no possible neighbour that can contain the shaded
             | kite (without resulting in an intersection, or a pair of
             | tiles that were previously eliminated as possible
             | neighbours), or we eliminated Y as a neighbour of X and so
             | can also eliminate X as a neighbour of Y.
             | 
             | From the preprint. It is definitely possible to lay the
             | tiles so that they do not tile anymore.
        
         | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
         | It's been a looooong time ....
         | 
         | But I could see this making a "psychedelic" experience a bit
         | more interesting.
        
       | DoctorMckay101 wrote:
       | Cowntdown until either Numberphile or Matt Parker does a video on
       | this. starting now
        
       | MontagFTB wrote:
       | My kids and I geeked out over the Veritasium video on Penrose
       | tiles (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48sCx-wBs34). It is pretty
       | exciting to see approachable math like this being discovered
       | before our eyes.
        
       | litoE wrote:
       | I dont't get it. In the picture, each tile is composed of 8
       | identical quadrilaterals. So why don't these quadrilaterals
       | constitute a simpler shape that can tile a wall and never repeat?
        
         | teawrecks wrote:
         | Someone below mentioned that the important part isn't that it
         | tiles aperiodically, but that it ONLY tiles aperiodically.
         | There are simpler shapes that will tile both aperiodically and
         | periodically.
        
         | twanvl wrote:
         | This tile forces a pattern that does not repeat. If you use the
         | simpler shape you can tile a wall such that it never repeats,
         | but you can also make a repeating pattern.
        
         | plopilop wrote:
         | The key point (often missed by these articles) is that
         | aperiodic tilings do not have a (infinite) periodic pattern.
         | This means that you cannot draw a shape on these tiles and say:
         | "the tiling is based on infinite repetitions of this shape, and
         | only this shape".
         | 
         | Of course individual tiles will repeat, but never in an
         | infinite periodic pattern.
         | 
         | Edit: a novelty of this paper is that their shape is "truly"
         | aperiodic, which means no matter how hard you try, you will end
         | up with aperiodic tiling. Existing one-shape aperiodic tilings
         | had to add constraints on how to put two shapes next to each
         | other to ensure aperiodicity.
        
           | notfed wrote:
           | "Of course individual tiles will repeat"
           | 
           | What does this mean? How can an individual tile "repeat"?
        
             | plopilop wrote:
             | I meant "a given orientation of the tile will be present
             | many times (or infinitely many)".
             | 
             | It's very probable (I did not read the paper, only their
             | website page) that the tile only occupies a finite amount
             | of orientations in the tiling and therefore at least (and
             | probably more if not all) one orientation will also be
             | present an infinite amount of times.
             | 
             | However this does not imply periodicity of the tiling.
        
       | mg wrote:
       | They provide this demo:
       | 
       | https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/hat/app.html
       | 
       | I just wished one could turn off the colors.
       | 
       | The colors really distract me from trying to see the patterns the
       | shape itself creates. For me, the beauty here is that each piece
       | is exactly the same. Colorizing them differently takes away from
       | that.
        
         | sjaak wrote:
         | Try this:
         | 
         | main { filter: saturate(7) grayscale(10) contrast(3); }
        
         | gwbas1c wrote:
         | > I just wished one could turn off the colors.
         | 
         | It's not too hard to scrape the JavaScript out of the page. You
         | could figure out where they set the colors and change that
         | part.
         | 
         | I also wonder if you can do that on
         | https://mathigon.org/polypad/8kVqVH2Mor6JTQ
         | 
         | There's also https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/hat/, but sadly I
         | didn't see anything like a github link to the above demo.
        
       | magicalhippo wrote:
       | Ever since we went hunting for tiles for our first remodeling,
       | I've been thinking about why not Wang tiles[1][2] were available.
       | 
       | I mean obviously it'd be too much cost and hassle, since you need
       | at least 5 different tiles to tile a plane, but I'm still curious
       | how it would actually turn out on a real floor or wall, with an
       | interesting pattern on the tiles.
       | 
       | While you need multiple Wang tiles, at least they can be square
       | rather than a rather awkward polygonal shape. So there's that...
       | 
       | [1]: https://grahamshawcross.com/2012/10/12/wang-tiles-and-
       | aperio...
       | 
       | [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_tile
        
         | angry_moose wrote:
         | Purely from an aesthetics standpoint, I'm guessing its because
         | they have a tendency to form quasi-repeating patterns and long
         | rivers which are generally unsightly (which is subjective):
         | 
         | The long string of horizontal yellow diamonds and upside down
         | blue "darts" in this image:
         | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Wa...
         | 
         | Or the red "dominoes" in this image:
         | https://grahamshawcross.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/13tiling...
        
           | srcreigh wrote:
           | seems as if this could be solved by using a different
           | palette. The red sticks out cuz it's deep dark red more than
           | cuz it's dominoes. Maybe.
        
             | RC_ITR wrote:
             | Maybe, I think in general though, this falls into uncanny
             | valley territory.
             | 
             | Humans like patterns or randomness, we sort of hate quasi-
             | versions of either (See: our disdain for blurry pictures).
        
         | cromulent wrote:
         | They did a mall in Helsinki with Penrose tiles, I really like
         | it.
         | 
         | http://www.neverendingbooks.org/penrose-tiles-in-helsinki
        
           | throwawaymaths wrote:
           | The Salesforce center in SF looks like it's Penrose tiles,
           | but I suspect they are cheating and are using a large segment
           | repeated on each section of the skirt.
        
             | RC_ITR wrote:
             | Maybe, but Penrose himself was involved, so I'd be very
             | bummed if that were true.
             | 
             | SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Transbay Joint Powers
             | Authority (TJPA) has received approval from Dr. Roger
             | Penrose, the eminent British mathematical physicist, to
             | incorporate his groundbreaking geometrical pattern in the
             | design of the exterior walls of the future Transbay Transit
             | Center (TTC) designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects
             | (PCPA). Dr. Penrose and PCPA are working in tandem to
             | incorporate Dr. Penrose's elegant design, known as the
             | Penrose Rhombus Tiling, in the skin of the TTC. The design
             | is remarkably simple but unique because it can be extended
             | infinitely without repeating itself. The Penrose system is
             | ideal for the perforations in the metal panels that will
             | form the curved exterior of the Transit Center.
             | 
             | https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130711006350/en/Ro
             | g...
        
           | iviv wrote:
           | Out of curiosity, is it idiomatic to call a street next to a
           | shopping center a mall? Ignorant Finn here.
        
             | aaron695 wrote:
             | [dead]
        
             | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
             | Sometimes. "Mall" alone generally refers to a big indoor
             | shopping space with many distinct stores; I'd probably call
             | the outdoor version an... "outdoor mall".
        
             | cromulent wrote:
             | No, probably my age and background. Street with shops and
             | no cars.
        
               | mjevans wrote:
               | I think in the US that would colloquially be called an:
               | 
               | Outdoor mall
               | 
               | Mall alone being the 80s style indoor walkable variety. A
               | 'strip mall' usually a single (often deformed to some
               | degree) line of stores along a sidewalk next to a huge
               | parking lot, also often with an island restaurant or
               | small store that wants to stand out closer to the street
               | edge of said lot.
        
           | Sharlin wrote:
           | Yeah. I wonder how the tilesetters actually did the concrete
           | tile-laying part. There are "quasiperiodic" Penrose tilings
           | that are composed of fairly regular "macroblocks", but this
           | Keskuskatu tiling looks pretty random to me. Did they just
           | have huge printouts of the pattern? Did they develop an
           | intuition of which tile goes where after a while? Were they
           | happy to do something different for a chance, or annoyed by
           | the convoluted task? :D
        
         | travisjungroth wrote:
         | I don't think this would be too much cost and hassle at all.
         | People make all sorts of fancy tiles and patterns with them.
         | Four colors as triangles is so simple I'm really surprised it
         | doesn't exist. Maybe a good niche online business for someone.
        
         | swayvil wrote:
         | Re : cool tiling options
         | 
         | There's girih tiles. It's like 5 tiles that you can do a bunch
         | of stuff with. Invented by some based geomystics like 1000
         | years ago.
         | 
         | And there's kisrhombille. Lots of options there.
        
         | deelly wrote:
         | I love the idea, maybe not in wiki colors but with some
         | stylization. One concern thought, how can I know how many tiles
         | of each type I will need?
        
       | dist-epoch wrote:
       | * for some definition of "never repeat".
       | 
       | Most people would call that pattern obviously repeating (in the
       | shape itself).
        
       | jschveibinz wrote:
       | I'm not a mathematician, but it's interesting to think about this
       | as a projection onto 2d. What can be said about the multi-
       | dimensional shape that creates this projection, or even if that
       | is possible?
        
         | ddingus wrote:
         | That was my first thought too.
         | 
         | Very interesting. There are specific regions that repeat, but
         | the overall image does not.
        
         | akomtu wrote:
         | This tiling is hexagons painted differently, and hexagons are
         | cubes projected onto a plane.
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | This geometry is a cousin of that geometry
       | 
       | http://www.fleen.org/generative_art_project/i0_quartersize.p...
        
       | frankus wrote:
       | Is the similarity to a Dragon Curve
       | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_curve) a coincidence? This
       | post (https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/hat/) mentions a substitution
       | system, which makes me think there might be a connection.
        
         | teraflop wrote:
         | As far as I know, the resemblance is superficial. (For one
         | thing, the standard dragon curve is based on 90deg angles, and
         | this tile has a mixture of 90deg and 120deg angles, giving it a
         | 6-fold pseudo-symmetry.) There are many other non-periodic or
         | aperiodic tilings that are based on substitution rules, and
         | many of them look totally different:
         | 
         | https://tilings.math.uni-bielefeld.de/substitution/penrose-r...
         | 
         | https://tilings.math.uni-bielefeld.de/substitution/fibonacci...
         | 
         | https://tilings.math.uni-bielefeld.de/substitution/semi-deta...
         | 
         | In addition, the dragon curve is a fractal -- mathematically,
         | it's defined as the limit that the substitution process
         | converges to as the details get "infinitely small", which means
         | that in a sense, the true dragon curve (as opposed to the
         | approximation that you can draw on a computer) has a boundary
         | with no straight line segments at all. On the other hand, an
         | aperiodic tiling is composed of finite, fixed-size tiles that
         | extend outwards to infinity.
         | 
         | Funnily enough, the dragon curve is a space-filling curve that
         | tiles the plane _periodically_.
        
       | youssefabdelm wrote:
       | I wish it were a little more random in a sense... just enough so
       | that the brain doesn't get "bored" of the evolution of the
       | pattern, but not too much randomness that the randomness itself
       | becomes like white noise (yet another pattern the brain can get
       | "bored" of)
       | 
       | Would be extremely curious if patterns like the one described
       | exist in math.
        
         | mckeed wrote:
         | I feel Penrose P2 tiles are better in that sense. I think you
         | could craft something with that kind of "fractal
         | interestingness" by using color to emphasize the larger regular
         | patterns that can occur in a Penrose tiling.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling#Kite_and_dart_t...
        
       | MC_10 wrote:
       | Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35242458
        
         | gniv wrote:
         | Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35264965
        
           | sampo wrote:
           | And: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35265569
        
       | mc32 wrote:
       | Roughly it looks like a T-shirt. One with a jagged bottom. Jagged
       | T-shirt tile.
        
         | tromp wrote:
         | Yes, this article goes more into the attire aspects:
         | 
         | https://aperiodical.com/2023/03/an-aperiodic-monotile-exists...
        
       | johndough wrote:
       | Project website with web demo https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/hat/
       | 
       | Direct link to PDF on ArXiv (89 pages)
       | https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.10798.pdf
        
       | dmtroyer wrote:
       | Kind of looks like overlapping t-shirts.
        
       | iamben wrote:
       | https://archive.is/iqBHP
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | This seems like the sort of thing Terrance Tao or a computer
       | should have solved long ago.
        
       | ReaderView wrote:
       | [dead]
        
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