The Conservative Cave
The Bar => The Lounge => Topic started by: bijou on May 08, 2009, 10:26:17 AM
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Two physicists have published an academic paper where they demonstrate, by virtue of geometric progression, that vampires could not exist, since they would almost immediately deplete their entire food supply (a.k.a, all of us).
If you've ever read Salem's Lot (or seen the lame Starsky and Hutch-era miniseries adaptation starring David Soul), then you know that after a vampire decides to settle in your town, the undead begin to multiply at an alarming rate (he bites two friends, who bite two friends, and so on, and so on…).
Putting aside for a moment the issue of how that would impact neighborhood property values, this phenomenon raises an even more pressing question: If vampires are indeed living (unliving?) among us, then shouldn't we have seen an undead population explosion by now?
Fortunately, our best minds are on the case. Physicists Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi's paper "Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality" offers a full explanation.
Efthimiou and Gandhi conduct a thought experiment: Assume that the first vampire appeared on January 1, 1600. At that time, according to data available at the U.S. Census website, the global population was 536,870,911. Efthimiou and Gandhi calculate that, once the Nosferatu feeding frenzy began, the entire human race would have been wiped out by June 1602 (thus forever changing the course of history by preventing the invention of the slide rule eighteen years later).
The physicists note:
Another philosophical principal related to our argument is the truism given the elaborate title, the anthropic principle. This states that if something is necessary for human existence, then it must be true since we do exist. In the present case, the nonexistence of vampires is necessary for human existence. Apparently, whomever devised the vampire legend had failed his college algebra and philosophy courses.
Oooh, snap! But, this gauntlet had been barely thrown down before it invited a rebuttal from mathematician Dino Sejdinovic. In his article, "Mathematics of the Human Vampire Conflict" (Math Horizons, November 2008) Sejdinovic faults Efthimiou and Gandhi's logic, since they have not "accounted for the birth-rate of non-vampires and death-rate of vampires (actually the death-death-rate since they are already dead, but when they die again they should stay dead but stop being living) due to close encounters with stakes, garlic and holy water." Moreover, "vampires are presented exclusively as greedy consumers: a rational strategy of managing their human resources is not considered."
Here, Sejdinovic cites the pioneering research conducted by Austrian mathematicians Richard Hartl and Alexander Mehlmann, who published the landmark 1982 paper, "The Transylvanian Problem of Renewable Resources," later followed up by "Cycles of Fear: Periodic Bloodsucking Rates for Vampires" (Journal of Optimization Theory and Application, December 1992). Hartl and Mehlmann argue that vampires would never be stupid enough to deplete their entire food supply, and by applying the Hopf-Bifurcation Theorem (don't ask), they demonstrate how vampires can adopt an optimal "cyclical bloodsucking strategy." ...MORE...
LINK (http://io9.com/5241252/physicists-prove-that-vampires-could-not-exist)
It's OK people you can relax now. :-)
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No mention of zombies in the article however. A telling omission.
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No mention of zombies in the article however. A telling omission.
But you all have zombie apocalypse plans, vampires have been a very much neglected threat. :lmao:
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Whew! I'm so glad I can take off the garlic necklace. :-)
Although no mention of the real bloodsuckers that walk among us: Lawyers!!!
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Whew! I'm so glad I can take off the garlic necklace. :-)
Although no mention of the real bloodsuckers that walk among us: Lawyers!!!
Take your 'Zombie Apocalypse' plan, cross out the word 'Zombie' and over-write the word 'Lawyer'. Problem solved.
Though I would keep an eye on DAT's location; the Lawyer venom doesn't seem to have completely corrupted his mind, and it would be a shame to blast him by mistake. :cheersmate:
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I think I need a Politician Apocalypse Plan :rofl:
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Yeah but does anyone have the 400 foot tall green lizard from Japan plan anywhere?
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They ASSume that everyone bitten by a vampire is turned. Several vampire legends point to the ability to control the number of vampires created thus rendering the mathematical equation moot.