Celebration of Diffraction

It has been a while since elkement’s diffraction art has been presented to the world the first time ever.

It was you, netizens(*) of the blogosphere(*), who saw it first – three years ago!
(*) This is is internet dinosaur jargon

This is the original Ribbon of Diffraction:

Each image shows the same virtual sculpture from a different viewpoint. This ribbon is built from tightly packed diffraction curves – mathematical functions representing the intensity of diffracted light on a certain point on a flat screen, for a certain color.

Curves are stacked as if there was a separate screen for each color. The curvature of the ‘folds’ of this ‘fabric’ shows that red light is diffracted more than blue light.

The maximum height of the peaks depends on the color – the wavelength. This is not due to the physics of diffraction! I weighted the curves with the intensity of black body radiation for a temperature close to that of the sun. As if white sunlight would be diffracted by my hypothetical diffraction grating.

I created this images with python code using the mathematics software framework SageMath (which under the hood uses JavaScript and threejs to render 3D plots).

It looked like ribbons floating through deep space, like the Nexus of the Star Trek saga.

I felt I had to add delicate space probes investigating it.

My early physics-related art had been inspired by Roger Penrose’s book The Road to Reality, especially by his hand-crafted old-school illustrations. It came natural to me to use public domain vintage science drawings as ‘spacecrafts’. I picked drawings created by Isaac Newton!

However, Isaac Newton had illustrated refraction: Dispersion prisms, lenses, Newtonian rings. My images were related to diffraction. Red light is diffracted more than blue, but refracted less than blue. These spaceships were not a perfect fit.

In my next series of diffraction art – called Jellyfish of Diffraction – I mounted the diffraction curves on cylindrical screens. A>s if light of different colors is captured on screens with different radii.

I learned that illustrations of US patents are in the public domain and started searching for suitable spaceships again! Randomly, I’ve picked a patent with appealing illustrations – to find out that they match the images closely: The patent was about a spectrometer using diffraction and curved screens.

After that, the spaceships were propelled into a different universe and not seen again.

I created more series of diffraction art, trying to fill the black void with my rainbow-colored fabrics only.

There was an Atoll of Diffraction:

… a Sparse Spectral Spaceport …

…and there were Echoes of the Atoll:

But finally, as the last creative project of 2024, I’ve brought the spaceships back!

It started as a geometric drawing exercise in Procreate. Would it be possible to mimic ruler and compass by the digital tools for creating circles and straight lines?

I have drawn one of the curves that makes up the skeleton of my jellyfishes, atolls, and spaceports. This is as an axonometric projection, based on the view from the top and from the side, created step-by-step as if I would draw on paper. The 2Diews in turn were created ‘from first principles’, by calculating the sine function geometrically.

All of that is in this illustration:

Finally, I have been able to create my own vintage spaceship.

They were able to fly right into the nexus and even divide it into two parts!

I call it: Celebration of Diffraction!

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