Topological references, courtesy of Futurama

I am re-posting this from my microblog Tumbld Thoughts, as it has been one of my most popular posts there.  The theme fits in well with this blog as well.

Currently catching up on TV. In the Futurama episode "Benderama", there was a reference to the Banach-Tarski paradox (in the form of a duplicator machine) [1]. The machine is used to duplicate things (ultimately Bender) at progressively smaller scales [2]. All this in 23 minutes. Great stuff.

NOTES: 

[1] the point was not to be technically accurate. The point was to make an analogical and highly obscure reference so that people like me could talk about it.

[2]  the "shrinker" eventually leads to the potential destruction of the world's drinking supply (nice subreference to the gray goo hypothesis/scenario in the field of nanotechnology).