Adam MannPerhaps the Cubists were right. Researchers have found that when everything from icebergs to rocks breaks apart, their pieces tend to resemble cubes.
The finding suggests a universal rule of fragmentation at scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary.“It’s a very beautiful combination of pure mathematics, materials science, and geology,” says Sujit Datta, a chemical and biological engineer at Princeton University who was not involved in the work.The finding builds on the previous work of mathematician Gábor Domokos of Budapest University of Technology and Economics, who in 2006 helped prove the existence of the gömböc, a gemstone-like shape that has only one stable balance point.