Menu
Home
People
Places
Arts
History
Plants & Animals
Science
Life & Culture
Technology
Reference.org
Einstein problem
open-in-new
<h2 id="proposed-solutions">Proposed solutions</h2> <p>In 1988, Peter Schmitt discovered a single aperiodic prototile in three-dimensional <a href="/facts/Euclidean_space/R2UbzmzM">Euclidean space</a>. While no tiling by this prototile admits a <a href="/facts/Translation_(geometry)/KlpWmnfX">translation</a> as a symmetry, some have a <a href="/facts/Screw_axis/Cos1gnJb">screw symmetry</a>. The screw operation involves a combination of a translation and a rotation through an irrational multiple of π, so no number of repeated operations ever yield a pure translation. This construction was subsequently extended by <a href="/facts/John_Horton_Conway/g3PA1zoK">John Horton Conway</a> and Ludwig Danzer to a <a href="/facts/Convex_set/vdAuJRJl">convex</a> aperiodic prototile, the <a href="/facts/Gyrobifastigium/nGDBBx9K">Schmitt–Conway–Danzer tile</a>. The presence of the screw symmetry resulted in a reevaluation of the requirements for non-periodicity.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a> <a href="/facts/Chaim_Goodman-Strauss/4IKWbx8w">Chaim Goodman-Strauss</a> suggested that a tiling be considered <i>strongly aperiodic</i> if it admits no <a href="/facts/Infinite_cyclic_group/JL5zfFuL">infinite cyclic group</a> of <a href="/facts/Euclidean_motion/0KzWYQXl">Euclidean motions</a> as symmetries, and that only tile sets which enforce strong aperiodicity be called strongly aperiodic, while other sets are to be called <i>weakly aperiodic</i>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a> </p> <p>In 1996, Petra Gummelt constructed a decorated decagonal tile and showed that when two kinds of overlaps between pairs of tiles are allowed, the tiles can cover the plane, but only non-periodically.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a> A tiling is usually understood to be a covering with no overlaps, and so the Gummelt tile is not considered an aperiodic prototile. An aperiodic tile set in the <a href="/facts/Euclidean_plane/tAUtRFcn">Euclidean plane</a> that consists of just one tile–the <a href="/facts/Socolar%E2%80%93Taylor_tile/Epz2SD7f">Socolar–Taylor tile</a>–was proposed in early 2010 by Joshua Socolar and Joan Taylor.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a> This construction requires matching rules, rules that restrict the relative orientation of two tiles and that make reference to decorations drawn on the tiles, and these rules apply to pairs of nonadjacent tiles. Alternatively, an undecorated tile with no matching rules may be constructed, but the tile is not connected. The construction can be extended to a three-dimensional, connected tile with no matching rules, but this tile allows tilings that are periodic in one direction, and so it is only weakly aperiodic. Moreover, the tile is not simply connected. </p> <h2 id="the-hat-and-the-spectre">The hat and the spectre</h2> <p>In November 2022, hobbyist <a href="/facts/David_Smith_(hobbyist)/zvYlE9Aq">David Smith</a> discovered a "hat"-shaped tile formed from eight copies of a 60°–90°–120°–90° <a href="/facts/Kite_(geometry)/PRcvPntl">kite</a> (<a href="/facts/Deltoidal_trihexagonal_tiling/RJPMacIY">deltoidal trihexagonals</a>), glued edge-to-edge, which seemed to only tile the plane aperiodically.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7"><sup>7</sup></a> Smith recruited help from mathematician <a href="/facts/Craig_S._Kaplan/L7jHPHwN">Craig S. Kaplan</a>, and subsequently Joseph Samuel Myers and <a href="/facts/Chaim_Goodman-Strauss/4IKWbx8w">Chaim Goodman-Strauss</a>, and in March 2023 the group posted a preprint proving that the hat, when considered with its mirror image, forms an aperiodic prototile set.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8"><sup>8</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9"><sup>9</sup></a> Furthermore, the hat can be generalized to an infinite family of tiles with the same aperiodic property. As of July 2024 this result has been formally published in the journal <i>Combinatorial Theory.</i><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10"><sup>10</sup></a> </p> <p>In May 2023 the same team (Smith, Myers, Kaplan, and Goodman-Strauss) posted a new preprint about a family of shapes, called "spectres" and related to the "hat", each of which can tile the plane using only rotations and translations.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11"><sup>11</sup></a> Furthermore, the "spectre" tile is a "strictly chiral" aperiodic monotile: even if reflections are allowed, every tiling is non-periodic and uses only one chirality of the spectre. That is, there are no tilings of the plane that use both the spectre and its mirror image. </p><p>In 2023, a public contest run by the <a href="/facts/National_Museum_of_Mathematics/xuaudVQf">National Museum of Mathematics</a> in <a href="/facts/New_York_City/YlyvFmVC">New York City</a> and the <a href="/facts/United_Kingdom_Mathematics_Trust/15RLb0ha">United Kingdom Mathematics Trust</a> in <a href="/facts/London/KozCCsy9">London</a> asked people to submit creative renditions of the hat einstein. Out of over 245 submissions from 32 countries, three winners were chosen and received awards at a ceremony at the <a href="/facts/House_of_Commons/D7fJpmYv">House of Commons</a>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:12" href="#fn:12"><sup>12</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:13" href="#fn:13"><sup>13</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="applications">Applications</h2> <p>Einstein tile's molecular analogs may be used to form chiral, two dimensional <a href="/facts/Quasicrystal/evHcQeCp">quasicrystals</a>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:14" href="#fn:14"><sup>14</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="see-also">See also</h2> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Binary_tiling/H90sIhs4">Binary tiling</a>, a weakly aperiodic tiling of the hyperbolic plane with a single tile</li> <li><a href="/facts/Schmitt%E2%80%93Conway%E2%80%93Danzer_tile/nGDBBx9K">Schmitt–Conway–Danzer tile</a>, in three dimensions</li></ul> <h2 id="external-links">External links</h2> <ul><li><a href="https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/hat/">An aperiodic monotile</a> by Smith, Myers, Kaplan, and Goodman-Strauss</li> <li>Haran, Brady; MacDonald, Ayliean (2023). <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArADlJx7SlU&t=29s">"A New Tile in Newtyle"</a> (video). <i><a href="/facts/Numberphile/pqqG2edI">Numberphile</a></i>.</li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>Klaassen, Bernhard (2022). "Forcing nonperiodic tilings with one tile using a seed". European Journal of Combinatorics. 100 (C): 103454. arXiv:2109.09384. doi:10.1016/j.ejc.2021.103454. S2CID 237571405. <a href="/wiki/ArXiv_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/ArXiv_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>Senechal, Marjorie (1996) [1995]. Quasicrystals and Geometry (corrected paperback ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 22–24. ISBN 0-521-57541-9. <a href="0-521-57541-9" target="_blank">0-521-57541-9</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>Radin, Charles (1995). "Aperiodic tilings in higher dimensions". Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. 123 (11). American Mathematical Society: 3543–3548. doi:10.2307/2161105. JSTOR 2161105. MR 1277129. <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2161105" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2161105</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>Goodman-Strauss, Chaim (10 Jan 2000). "Open Questions in Tiling" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2007-04-18. Retrieved 2007-03-24. <a href="http://comp.uark.edu/~strauss/papers/survey.pdf" target="_blank">http://comp.uark.edu/~strauss/papers/survey.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:5"><p>Gummelt, Petra (1996). "Penrose Tilings as Coverings of Congruent Decagons". Geometriae Dedicata. 62 (1): 1–17. doi:10.1007/BF00239998. S2CID 120127686. <a href="/wiki/Doi_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/Doi_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:6"><p>Socolar, Joshua E. S.; Taylor, Joan M. (2011). "An Aperiodic Hexagonal Tile". Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A. 118 (8): 2207–2231. arXiv:1003.4279. doi:10.1016/j.jcta.2011.05.001. S2CID 27912253. <a href="/wiki/ArXiv_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/ArXiv_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:7"><p>Klarreich, Erica (4 Apr 2023). "Hobbyist Finds Math's Elusive 'Einstein' Tile". Quanta. <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/hobbyist-finds-maths-elusive-einstein-tile-20230404/" target="_blank">https://www.quantamagazine.org/hobbyist-finds-maths-elusive-einstein-tile-20230404/</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:8"><p>Smith, David; Myers, Joseph Samuel; Kaplan, Craig S.; Goodman-Strauss, Chaim (Mar 2023). "An aperiodic monotile". arXiv:2303.10798 [math.CO]. <a href="/wiki/Chaim_Goodman-Strauss" target="_blank">/wiki/Chaim_Goodman-Strauss</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:9"><p>Lawson-Perfect, Christian; Steckles, Katie; Rowlett, Peter (22 Mar 2023). "An aperiodic monotile exists!". The Aperiodical. <a href="https://aperiodical.com/2023/03/an-aperiodic-monotile-exists/" target="_blank">https://aperiodical.com/2023/03/an-aperiodic-monotile-exists/</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:10"><p>Smith, David; Myers, Joseph Samuel; Kaplan, Craig S.; Goodman-Strauss, Chaim (2024). "An aperiodic monotile". Combinatorial Theory. 4 (1). arXiv:2303.10798. doi:10.5070/C64163843. ISSN 2766-1334. <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3317z9z9" target="_blank">https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3317z9z9</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:11"><p>Smith, David; Myers, Joseph Samuel; Kaplan, Craig S.; Goodman-Strauss, Chaim (2023). "A chiral aperiodic monotile". arXiv:2305.17743 [math.CO]. <a href="/wiki/ArXiv_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/ArXiv_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:12"><p>Roberts, Siobhan (10 Dec 2023). "What Can You Do With an Einstein?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2023-12-13. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/science/mathematics-tiling-einstein.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/science/mathematics-tiling-einstein.html</a> <a href="#fnref:12" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:13"><p>"hatcontest". National Museum of Mathematics. Retrieved 2023-12-13. <a href="https://momath.org/hatcontest/" target="_blank">https://momath.org/hatcontest/</a> <a href="#fnref:13" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:14"><p>"A predicted quasicrystal is based on the 'einstein' tile known as the hat". 25 Jan 2024. Retrieved 2024-07-24. <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quasicrystal-einstein-tile-hat-shape" target="_blank">https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quasicrystal-einstein-tile-hat-shape</a> <a href="#fnref:14" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>