Behold: A hole thru a hole in a 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)