The Beauty Pinciple says that if a theory or principle is
beautiful or elegant then it has a high probability of being true and
useful.  Fractals are both beautiful and useful and when played
together with an excellent music soundtrack the results are
incomparable.

     A fractal is a colored image that mathematically models how well
things survive in their environments.  Life forms survive through a
process of constant change, change that must take place within
reasonable bounds if the organism is not to be destroyed.

     The environments that an organism lives in, such as a forest or
atmosphere, play a critical role in maintaining this healthy state of
change.  Those environments which are the most conducive to long term
survival are colored black in the fractal image.  Those environments
which are not conducive to life, such as an atmosphere filled with
smog or a forest poisoned by acid rain, are colored according to how
long the organism is able to live in them before it can no longer
survive.

     The following four blowups show the classic Mandelbrot Set which
is a picture of the space of all possible environments an organism or
weather system might be in.  In the black areas of the Mandelbrot Set
change is constant and within reasonable bounds, so some chance of
life is possible especially near the borders with the colored areas.
In the colored areas the change becomes too swift and eventually
becomes infinite, which of course leads to the total destruction of
the system under consideration.  The black areas are colored black
because theoretically at least the system never dies.  The colored
areas are colored according to how fast the system does die.

FOUR ZOOMS OF THE MANDELBROT SET

 Science uses fractals to model and predict the survival of
everything from hurricanes to intergalactic nebulae.  In fact anything
whose survival is dependent upon its surroundings can be modeled with
this new math.
 
     For example the hurricane exists within the rest of the
atmosphere of Earth.  If the remaining atmosphere, where there is no
hurricane, were to be removed, the hurricane would quickly disappear.
 
     Thus the survival of a hurricane is very much dependent on the
bright and calm sunny days on the other side of the planet.  Changing
the atmosphere around the hurricane changes the life course of the
hurricane itself.  In this way science uses fractal mathematics to
better understand and cope with the wonderful natural world that
surrounds us.