cimorene: an abstract arrangement of primary-colored rectangles and black lines on beige (all caps)
Cimorene ([personal profile] cimorene) wrote2019-02-01 01:04 pm

Möbius strips → Klein bottles → possible origin of the reverse twin

Although I haven't made a commitment to make shitposts for February, I thought it would be a good occasion for a rather silly and obscure post

Möbius strips are cool and I've always thought so.

So I watched this video suggested to me by YouTube about the Möbius strip's three-dimensional extrusion, the Klein bottle. I hadn't heard of it before, but the Klein bottle is to the Möbius strip as the cube is to the square, and it's essentially a tube that is twisted in a Möbius strip with the result that it intersects itself.

The Mathologer introduces this thought experiment first with an image of a Möbius strip and demonstrates that if we consider the Möbius strip as a 2-dimensional plane, a 2-dimensional being living in this plane could travel through the Möbius strip and be upside-down when it reaches its starting point...



...such that when you rotate it right-side up again it is facing the opposite direction, but since it exists in only 2 dimensions, it has actually been converted into a mirror image of itself.



Then he blew my tiny mind by saying that therefore it was possible that in some place where our 3-dimensional universe is folded like a Klein bottle, a 3-dimensional being could be transformed into their own mirror image simply by traveling through it as well.

[personal profile] waxjism thought it was hilarious, but this really creeped me out. I paused the video twice to explain what rubbed me the wrong away about it. (This isn't a realistic fear, of course, just a concept that I find viscerally upsetting - so not like the idea of getting Lyme disease from a tick, more like the sight/knowledge of those trees with the huge tumorous growths in the bark.)

As I was groping for words to explain the concept, I accidentally surfaced Chuck Tingle's concept of the "reverse twin" - a sinister and malevolent being, perhaps from the Void???, which he characterizes as wishing to steal your skin; but really you have to be familiar with Chuck Tingle's whole... ethos and persona for context probably - and suddenly I gasped, "The reverse twin! I wonder if that's where the reverse twin came from!"
cesy: "Cesy" - An old-fashioned quill and ink (Default)

[personal profile] cesy 2019-02-01 12:18 pm (UTC)(link)
I love Klein bottles. Someday I will try out one of the knitting patterns, because Moebius strip scarves are great.
cesy: "Cesy" - An old-fashioned quill and ink (Default)

[personal profile] cesy 2019-02-01 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, I wouldn't know how to do it on ordinary needles, but I love circular needles even for straight projects, because they're easier to carry in a bag with less risk of things falling off. The way I learned just needs one pair of circular needles, and once you've cast on and done the first row it's all easy background-knitting.