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Counting Is Hard

Unexpected use of topology in the wikipedia "Lint" article.

Screenshot of the Wikipedia "Lint" article featuring the text "One hypothesis is that lint travels along a hair highway defined as integral curves of the vector field given by the direction of growth of the hair, which must end at a vanishing point according to the hairy ball theorem." under the heading "Navel Lint"
#topology#wikipedia
Feb 12, 2025, 06:43 PM·Public·Web
12boosts·12favorites
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RobJLow

@counting_is_hard So the belly button is an attractor of the belly hair vector field... Dynamical systems in action!

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soaproot

@counting_is_hard Looks like a big fat en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template to me, as I didn't see anything substantiating the claim. I'm debating a bit whether I should do anything about this, although I suppose I should.

en.wikipedia.orgTemplate:Failed verification - Wikipedia
Public
soaproot

@counting_is_hard OK, I took a closer look. The bad news was that I didn't find anything connecting navel lint to the hairy ball theorem (certainly not in the cited source). The good news is that I was able to find a second writeup, in PubMed Central, of the research (which consisted largely of a big survey) which had already been cited in the article. This won the author an Ig Nobel!

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