In the meanwhile, lets talk about the author himself a bit. Roger Penrose is not an unfamiliar name to those excited by Physics and Mathematics.(At this point I am tempted to make a digression and quote our Modern Physics professor Dr.Sabieh Anwar:"But we are not Mathematicians.We are human beings!")Anyway, Roger Penrose is an acclaimed Mathematical Physicist and is particularly famous for his contributions to General Relativity and Twistor theory among many other things. He also holds interesting and sometimes questionable views on the connection between Physics, Maths and conciousness. He even came up with a theory linking microtubles and quantum gravity to explain human thinking; intense discussions on Artificial Intelligence are bound to bring up Penrose's views.
Amongst his more trivial yet puzzling works is the development of the famous Penrose stairs shown below. The figure is aptly called the impossible staircase because the two-dimensional illusion implies that you can climb 'up' or 'down' round a 360-degrees turn and still be on the same level! Look closely, and if you ever come up with a 3-d replica of the object below let me know. Till then, it's the yummy Islamabad winter, steaming coffee and funny-scientist-thoughts for me:)
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