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Behold: A hole thru a hole in a hole

Mark Frauenfelder at 8:40 am Wed, Aug 15, 2012

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Hole hole hole
You'll tell your grandkids about the day you saw this. (Thanks Clifford Pickover!)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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  • awjt

    Christ, what A HOLE.

  • http://twitter.com/vonslatt Jake von Slatt

    Yo dawg …

    • TaymonBeal

      I was going to say that, but realized it might come out wrong.

      • DreamboatSkanky

        But out of which hole?

  • http://symbioid.livejournal.com/ Dave

    Is there a name for this sort of construct?  It reminds me of a Klein Bottle, but I wonder if it’s a bit different enough that it has its own name…

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=41203083 Joe Alfano

      Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s homeomorphic to a torus (“donut”) ?

      • bunkyboar

        I think topologically it is a triple torus, arranged to be cool enough that I want to get a 3D printer and try it out.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_torus

        Compress it left-right a bit in your head and you can see the inner whole is just two holes. Stretch front-back and do a half-twist of the center and it looks just like the middle triple torus in the wikipedia article.

        • knappa

          No, the 3-torus is both 3-dimensional (while this is 2 dimensional) and not embedable in standard 3-space.  This is a genus 3 orientable surface.

          Edit: I just scrolled down the wikipedia page you linked to and saw that they both have the 3 torus and the genus 3 surface both listed as the “triple torus”. So you are correct. I have to say, as a topologist, wikipedia is the only place I have ever heard this terminology.

          • http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

             ”Triple torus” sounds like a very large and decadent doughnut…

  • Conan Librarian

    That would make an interesting…um, toy. 

    • CLamb

       It would be even more interesting on a golf course green.

      • tubacat

         Miniature golf!

    • Boundegar

      Nooooooo!  Twisting the fabric of space in this way will destroy us all!

  • Markus99

    I’m pretty sure apple has recently patented this. 

  • UncaScrooge

    It appears to be a series of tubes.

  • http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

    I dig it. I want a glass one.

  • http://twitter.com/bigbadchang Chang Terhune

    TIME CUBE, MOTHERHOLER!!!

  • dawdler

    Unless tubes have been redefined as holes, this would be a tube through a hole in a tube.

    • SamSam

      What’s the difference between a tube and a hole? If you squashed that shape flat along one of its dimensions, wouldn’t the hole be unambiguously a hole? What if it were not quite flat but just a millimeter or so thick? If a worm eats through my shirt, hasn’t it just made a really short tube for itself?

      • dawdler

        it’s kind of like obscenity. i can’t really define a hole, but I know it when i see it.

        ok, seriously? i don’t know the definition of a hole. but i guess in MY mind it’s a gap in a plane. a hole may be defined by a place where a gap in a plane starts a tube, but the hole itself is just the gap in the plane. but i have zero anything to back that up.

        • http://www.madziabryll.com Cefeida

          A tube without a hole is not a tube. The tube contains the hole. A hole must allow for the passage of objects from one place to another, therefore, we can say that the tube is either:

          1. an enclosed space with two holes, both leading inside
          2. two holes joined by a tunnel
          3. a single hole running through the length of the object.

          Actually, I have no idea what that proves. Go ask Jeremy Hillary Ph.D. 

    • http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

      As in worm-tube, rabbit-tube, bore-tube, moho… um, tube?

    • styrofoam

      Christ, what an asstube.

  • http://twitter.com/awlawl Allen Lyons

    I predict sometime in our lifetime we will have a hole through a hole through a hole in a hole. And as we approach the singularity, we will go deeper.

    • knappa

      Related without holes:
      http://www.math.osu.edu/~fiedorowicz.1/math655/alexander.gif
      and with many holes:
      http://www.math.byu.edu/~wright/conference%20and%20workshop/Grope.gif

    • http://twitter.com/trempls tré

       Liked for probable accuracy.

  • TimRowledge

    Woo-head guest at party: Y’know (whispered in an awed voice) the Navaho have a really weird language. It’s *so* weird that they have a special word for the holey bit inside a tube.

    Me: Of course, so does English. Bore. 

  • Logolepsy

    This is from “Mathematics and the Imagination”, a 1940 book by Edward Kasner (and James R. Newman). By the way, this was the book that introduced the word “googol”…

    http://www.goofbutton.com/2008/05/aleph_null.html 
    http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Imagination-Edward-Kasner/dp/0486417034

  • andygates

    Swiftly, to the 3D printer and some shiny transparent tinted stuff!

  • graou

    Am I the only one who just see the hole thru the hole but not the hole they’re in ? Unless I see the hole in the hole (so these two holes) but not the one to go thru…

    • http://keithhandy.com Keith Handy

      The second “hole” in the list is a negative hole, i.e. the solid area where one hole splits into two tunnels.

  • Jenni Copeland

    You mean, be’hole’d

  • pjcamp

    Why do I look at that and see underpants?

  • vrplumber

    Is this to be found on the bottom of the bottom in the bottom of the sea?

  • kiptw

    “…any whole hole with a hole bitten in it
    Is a holey whole hole,
    And it Just… Plain… ISN’T!”

    (From a doughnut song in Homer Price, as recalled)