Lux Absio Bervatum

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Molecule-Like Topology Engine

I never got around to posting my Molecule-Like Topology Engine that I finished last October. Here's a relatively low-res JPEG version (3200×3200):

The "real" version is a PDF here: MLTE-poster_final5(CMYK).pdf (7 MB GoogleDrive link)

I had this printed as a limited run of forty 24×24 inch posters, but you can also print your own if you want 'cause it's licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

I really enjoy the mechanical process of using the engine to encode a node-and-link map ("topology"). The "large structure" in the poster is basically a bunch of these topologies I made and then linked together. 38 of them are versions of real-world molecules (as described in the key in the lower-right corner) and then another 30 or so were just made-up designs.

Fun fact: The full code block including markers is around 26,600 characters long. If you take out the marker digits and use the 22-bit node/11-bit link binary encoding shown in the code diagram (item 4 in the legend), the actual structure code is 10.63 kilobytes in size.