this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
826 points (100.0% liked)

Science Memes

15807 readers
2144 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Quaternions are the closest we get to lovecraftian horror in real life.

Four dimensional and mostly imaginary, they were carved into a stone bridge by a crazy mathematician in a fit of madness, Lord Kelvin called them "unmixed evil", and the Mad Hatter from Alice may have been inspired by them.

Also they have been a curiosity at best for a long time, despite the efforts of a ~~secret~~ Quaternion Society, but they suddenly blew up in usefulness in modern times as they happen to be an easy and fast way for computers to describe rotations in 3D space, so they're everywhere.

Yeah, lovecraftian as shit.