New class of polyhedron defined
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.027703
Ars Technica : Until now, there were considered to be only three classes of convex equilateral polyhedra: Platonic , Archimedean , and Keplerian . While studying the human eye, two UCLA researchers, Stan Schein and James Gayed, believe they have found a fourth class: Goldberg polyhedra . First described by Michael Goldberg in the 1930s, they are composed of multiple pentagons and hexagons that are connected in a symmetrical manner to form a soccer-ball-shaped object. Schein and Gayed, however, have refined the Goldberg shapes—whose faces bulged and so were not considered to be true polyhedra—so that the faces are flat. Understanding the structure of Goldberg polyhedra could be useful in such fields as architecture, for designing dome-shaped buildings, and biology, for better understanding the structures of viruses and discovering ways to fight them.
