Talk:Hypercycle (geometry)

A fact from Hypercycle (geometry) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 25 October 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that, in hyperbolic geometry, hypercycles are curves with constant distance from a straight line but are not themselves straight?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2006/October.

Wikipedia

List of properties copied?

It seems that the bulleted list of properties were copied directly from http://www.math.uncc.edu/~droyster/math3181/notes/hyprgeom/node68.html, which is referenced in the article. -- SilverStar 05:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I started from that list, but I reformulated the properties, changed the order and added some. The proofs are not taken from there: I did them myself, partially following Martin's book. Eubulide 07:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Circle Limit III

The text says that the Escher print contains hypercycles, but it doesn't explain why. Where's the straight line that one of those hypercycles is based on, and what defines the distance between them? 171.64.71.123 00:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In the Poincaré model, a circle represents

* a circle if it does not meet the horizon;

* a horocycle if it is tangent to the horizon;

* a straight line if it cuts the horizon at right angles;

* a hypercycle if it cuts the horizon at any other angle.

Since Escher's arcs are not perpendicular to the horizon, they must be hypercycles. The axis of a hypercycle is represented by the perpendicular circle that meets the horizon in the same pair of points. Sorry I can't help more than that. —Tamfang 08:39, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can see that in the actual woodcut, the lines seem to be at slight angles to perpendicular where they meet the horizon. The question is whether this is intended or not. I always thought of it as just a representational imperfection, just as how pencil strokes of finite width usually represent ideally widthless geometrical objects.

I started to write this comment with the intention of showing that Escher must have intended straight lines, but along the way I became convinced that he couldn't have. At first I thought that their being hypercycles would spoil the bilateral symmetry of the fish, but they are not symmetric to begin with - angle of the back corner of the fin is always 90° for right fins but 120° for left fins.

Even if each fish is individually non-symmetric we must, however, assume that each fish is congruent with every other fish; otherwise the entire artistic point of the woodcut is lost. This means by necessity that the white lines always meet each other at 60° angles (each angle in a six-way meet is alternately the right part of a head plus the right part of a tail, or the left part of a head plus the left part of a tail, but these two possibilities must be equal because they are opposite). Consider now the two different quadrilaterals centered on the middle of the disk. One, standing on its corner, has spines of yellow and green fish as its sides and a side length of one fish, and another, lying on a side, has spines of red and blue fish as its sides and a side length of two fish. If the white lines are straight, we have two regular quadrilaterals, both with 60° corners but one with straight sides twice as long as the other. This is an impossible configuration in hyperbolic geometry; there is no such thing as figures that are similar but have diferent sizes. Thus we're forced to abandon the assumption that the spines are straight lines. And having seen that, they do indeed look like hypercycles. –Henning Makholm 14:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The recent biography of Coxeter says the arcs are "branches of equidistant curves that cut through corresponding vertices of the octagons of the underlying tessellation." The "underlying tessellation" must be {8,3}. Its vertices are the intersections of the white lines plus the triple points of the left fins. —Tamfang 17:06, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense. I'll try to brush up a bit on hyperbolic trigonometry, and see if I can compute the answer to the original question, i.e. where the axes are with respect to the fish pattern. –Henning Makholm 20:36, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Higher dimensions?

Can you say 2-hypercycle like a horosphere, except not tangent to the ideal sphere? Tom Ruen (talk) 22:10, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{5,4}

The order-4 pentagonal tiling, {5,4} can be defined as an orthogonal grid of hypercycles.

A straight line is a special case of a hypercycle, but .... —Tamfang (talk) 08:33, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wondering about image

the article has the illusttration.

but I am wondering if this illustration is really usefull, where are the hypercycles? it looks more like (normal) hyperbolic lines than hypercycles

Can somebody verify and explain?WillemienH (talk) 21:40, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I removed it. Those are straight lines. Tom Ruen (talk) 22:28, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation choice

The recent renaming from Hypercycle (geometry) to Hypercycle (hyperbolic geometry) does not seem to me to be entirely appropriate. As I understand it, disambiguation should generally be kept to the minimum. How many different kinds of "hypercycle" in geometry are we trying to disambiguate between? There is only one, AFAICT.

From WP:DAB: "If there are several possible choices for parenthetical disambiguation, use the same disambiguating phrase already commonly used for other topics within the same class and context, if any." The disambiguation "(geometry)" is already in common use, and significantly, it is sufficient and obvious enough to the typical reader what is meant. The disambiguation is not intended to give information about the topic. —Quondum 16:04, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I renamed the page to Hypercycle (hyperbolic geometry) and while I agree it is more informative, I also did so to create space for maybe a future use of Hypercycle (geometry) for some kind of higher dimensional curve (how do you call a curve in 5 dimensions that doesn't fit in 3?) , given that the article is only about hypercycles in hyperbolic geometry ,I think it is appropriate. PS did create a redirect for Hypercycle (geometry) to this page WillemienH (talk) 16:50, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The rename looks pointless to me, just longer to type for no reason, and the rationalization (of possible higher dimensional meanings) unserious. What other articles contain a (hyperbolic geometry) disambiguation expression? Tom Ruen (talk) 17:01, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There in one primary generalization of hypercycle to higher dimensions that I can think of, which is not distinguished by this choice of disambiguation (it is a hypercycle in a hyperbolic plane that in turn is in a higher-dimensional hyperbolic geometry). This would simply be included in this article; it is the same concept, just like we do not separate circles in 2 dimensions from circles in three dimensions into separate articles. What you describe ("how do you call a curve in 5 dimensions that doesn't fit in 3?") seems like it is not something that would have the term hypercycle attached to it. Is there something specific that you have in mind? —Quondum 17:26, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not yet something specific, on the other side given that disamiguation is needed, why not be specific? What if we ever get an article on a 2 dimensional hypercycle how would we call it and how would its page be named given there is allready an hypersphere in geometry ? WillemienH (talk) 22:55, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is not right on several points:

"Given that disambiguation is needed" – this is not a given, and we have established that
"why not be specific" – because that is not the purpose nor the manner of disambiguation on WP; the most recognizable category is generally to be preferred; hence "(geometry)" would be preferred to "(hyperbolic geometry)"; perhaps even "(mathematics)" would be suitable.
"how would we call it and how would its page be named" – no need to anticipate; this is routinely done and articles appropriately renamed when the need arises.

Since this is a broader question than about this article, you could ask at a forum like WT:WPM. I don't feel comfortable arguing this without other input. —Quondum 03:24, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Started a discussion on this at [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Naming_convention_for_Parenthetical_disambiguation ] hope i did keep to neutral point of view. Disambiguation is needed because of hypercycle (chemistry) WillemienH (talk) 06:01, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 29 April 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. Obvious consensus towards moving. (non-admin closure). Anarchyte (work | talk) 09:51, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hypercycle (hyperbolic geometry) → Hypercycle (geometry) – No need to be over precise per WP:PRECISION. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:54, 29 April 2016 (UTC) --Relisted. George Ho (talk) 06:17, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

support; seems reasonable. Insert CleverPhrase Here 09:07, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
support It was renamed from Hypercycle (geometry) last summer without any discussion. I don't know if there are any other X (hyperbolic geometry) disambs. Tom Ruen (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Curves of constant curvature

The page could benefit by directly stating somewhere that hypercycles in the hyperbolic plane are curves of non-zero constant geodesic curvature which intersect the ideal boundary in distinct points. 2601:14B:4500:5A90:ACEC:3A94:4129:DA84 (talk) 02:07, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Feel free to work on this. In my opinion "curve of constant curvature between 0 and 1 in the hyperbolic plane" is the most natural basic definition of a "hypercycle". While we're at it we should also mentioning that when the hyperbolic plane is taken to be the hyperboloid of 2 sheets embedded in pseudo-Euclidean space of metric signature (2,1), a hypercycle is the intersection of the hyperboloid with a plane not passing through the origin but intersecting both sheets. It would be helpful to have an article about geodesics, hypercycles, horocycles, and circles ("hypocycles"?) in the hyperbolic plane, analogous to the existing articles about (Euclidean) generalized circles and spherical circles, and it would also be nice to have an article about curvature in the hyperbolic plane. –jacobolus (t) 02:29, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What has curvature 1? a horocycle? —Tamfang (talk) 03:44, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Obviously this depends on setting up the curvature for your hyperbolic space such that a horocycle has curvature 1, but that's a pretty convenient choice. I need to find some better sources about curvature in hyperbolic space though. (If anyone has some to recommend ...) –jacobolus (t) 05:09, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]