Breathtaking Satellite Photos of Fractal Patterns on Earth

Fractals occur naturally in every scale of life from the inconceivably large to the microscopic, and as I have always said, one needs to observe their surroundings and marvel at this amazing natural phenomena. Paul Bourke, a computer scientist at the University of Western Australia, started documented intriguing fractal patterns spread across the world, using Google Earth.

Bourke looked at the different landscapes and areas across the globe – from mountain ranges, rivers, forests, sand dunes to wetlands – and when zoomed out, these landscapes formed replicating fractal patterns. For example, if you look at a leaf, the veins bifurcate into even finer veins and they subdivide once again into even finer veins and this entire surface of the leaf resembles fractal characteristics.