As A Degenerate Ellipse
A line segment can be viewed as a degenerate case of an ellipse in which the semiminor axis goes to zero, the foci go to the end points, and the eccentricity goes to one. As a degenerate orbit this is a radial elliptic trajectory.
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Famous quotes containing the words degenerate and/or ellipse:
“A degenerate nobleman is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.”
—Seventeenth-century English saying.
“The ellipse is as aimless as that,
Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear
In our present. Its flexing is its account,
Return to the point of no return.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)