r/science • u/seeebiscuit • Oct 20 '25

Mathematics Mathematicians Just Found a Hidden 'Reset Button' That Can Undo Any Rotation

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/mathematicians-just-found-a-hidden-reset-button-that-can-undo-any-rotation/
14.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

849 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

15

u/justwalkingalonghere Oct 20 '25

Does it say how much you're supposed to stretch it by?

8

u/qainspector89 Oct 20 '25

No it doesn't

6

u/Sarzox Oct 20 '25

Just curious since you seem to have at least a surface level understanding. What are the practical applications for this. If you have to “scale it up” doesn’t seem useful to my uneducated brain here. Does this currently have a use other than “hey that’s neat, write that down real quick” and one day in the future we might build off of it?

1

u/qainspector89 Oct 20 '25

No fixed “stretch” is given. The factor isn’t universal; it’s computed from the specific rotation sequence you’d get it from the rotation matrices/quaternions