Mandelbrot had an advantage over Perrin and other predecessors in that he could commandeer computers to calculate and display stunning, unpredictable images of the extraordinary mathematical forms. Nowadays, fractals enter into scientists' descriptions of a wide range of phenomena, from the branching of air passages in the lungs and the flight paths of wandering albatrosses to the fracturing of a chunk of metal. Researchers are also looking toward the fractal frontiers. Fractals have, for example, a potentially important role to play in characterizing weather systems and in providing insights into various physical processes, such as the occurrence of earthquakes or the formation of deposits that shorten battery life. Some scientists view fractal statistics as a doorway to a unifying theory of medicine, offering a powerful glimpse of what it means to be healthy.
Fractals lie at the heart of current efforts to understand complex natural phenomena.
Unraveling their intricacies could reveal the basic design principles at work in our world. Only recently, there was no word to describe fractals. Today, we are beginning to see such features everywhere. Tomorrow, we may look at the entire universe through a fractal lens. The Fractal Geometry of Nature.