Amazing / Strange Things Scientists Calculated in 2021 (livescience.com) 36
fahrbot-bot writes: The world is full of beautiful equations, numbers and calculations. From counting beads as toddlers to managing finances as adults, we use math every day. But scientists often go beyond these quotidian forms of counting, to measure, weigh and tally far stranger things in the universe. From the number of bubbles in a typical glass of beer to the weight of all the coronavirus particles circulating in the world, LiveScience notes the 10 weird things scientists calculated in 2021.
- Number of bubbles in a half-pint glass of beer: up to 2 million bubbles, about twice as many as Champagne.
- Weight of all SARS-CoV-2 particles: between 0.22 and 22 pounds (0.1 and 10 kilograms).
- Counted African elephants from space for the first time -- Earth elephants (using satellites and AI) not Space Elephants.
- Acceleration of a finger snap: maximal rotational velocities of 7,800 deg/s and a maximal rotational acceleration of 1.6 million deg/s squared -- in seven milliseconds, more than 20 times faster than the blink of an eye, which takes more than 150 milliseconds.
- Calculated pi to 62.8 trillion decimal places.
- Updated the "friendship paradox" equations.
- Theoretical number and mass of all Black Holes: about 1% of all ordinary matter (not dark matter) in the universe.
- How long would it take to walk around the moon? At 4 hours a day, it would take about 547 Earth days, or about 1.5 years.
- How many active satellites currently orbit the planet? As of September 2021, there were around 7,500 active satellites in low Earth orbit.
- The "absolute limit" on the human life span: probably 120 to 150 years.
Meanwhile, in the briny depths from 2009 (Score:4, Informative)
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Trolls also hurl toxic barbs at 5.4 million g.
Good (Score:2)
I was curious what the 62 trillionth digit of pi was. I was betting it would be a 7.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
You can get the digits of pi at any sequence point without computing the preceding digits using the Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe_formula [wikipedia.org].
However, the answer is binary (or hexadecimal), not base-10.
Re: Good (Score:3)
They were using the formula pi=22/7 to accelerate the calculation.
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They calculated the 62-trillionth digit as 4.
They were using the formula pi=22/7 to accelerate the calculation.
Finally they hired someone rational to look at the problem
Walking on the moon? (Score:2)
Re:Walking on the moon? (Score:4, Funny)
Because giant steps are what you take walking on the moon.
Re:Walking on the moon? (Score:5, Funny)
Because giant steps are what you take walking on the moon.
According to Neil Armstrong, it's small steps and giant leaps.
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I was using Sting as my authority.
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Because giant steps are what you take walking on the moon.
Better hope you don't fracture a femur, that far from emergency services.
The cow jumped over the moon... (Score:2)
Fahrenheit451 (Score:1)
Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. ... And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with.
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To be fair, a good portion of sociology is not valid because it relies on facts that are not true (ie, the practitioners don't understand statistics).
Finally, news for nerds - stuff that matters (Score:5, Funny)
1: Number of bubbles in a half-pint glass of beer: up to 2 million bubbles, about twice as many as Champagne.
Normally one would scoff at the idea the unit measure of a half-pint is cleaner and more effective at informing than the metric system, much less something as unit less and beautiful as bubbles - but the whole idea of both is to deaden thinkn’ so this actually fits best.
2: Weight of all SARS-CoV-2 particles: between 0.22 and 22 pounds (0.1 and 10 kilograms).
So potentially enough to do _many_ lines at a _huge_ party?
3: Counted African elephants from space for the first time -- Earth elephants (using satellites and AI) not Space Elephants.
The audacity of some scientists... Didn’t they read the study at how much higher readers blood pressure gets when the term AI is used this way?
4: Acceleration of a finger snap: maximal rotational velocities of 7,800 deg/s and a maximal rotational acceleration of 1.6 million deg/s squared -- in seven milliseconds, more than 20 times faster than the blink of an eye, which takes more than 150 milliseconds.
Well, now I can confidently purchase a monitor with a refresh rate that exceeds the Nyquist sampling criteria for perfectly balanced finger snap viewing, as all monitors should be.
5: Calculated pi to 62.8 trillion decimal places.
Ain't got no grills but I still wear braces
6: Updated the "friendship paradox" equations.
I’m sorry, the work isn’t finished until it is formatted to be compatible with the Drake equation as it applies to dating.
7: Theoretical number and mass of all Black Holes: about 1% of all ordinary matter (not dark matter) in the universe.
What about the black holes that make up dark matter? If you hit the sweet spot in size they can punch right through a, um, planet and not leave much of mark.
8: How long would it take to walk around the moon? At 4 hours a day, it would take about 547 Earth days, or about 1.5 years.
How is this useful without specifying the average walking speed on the moon expressed in something straightforward like beard/seconds?
9: How many active satellites currently orbit the planet? As of September 2021, there were around 7,500 active satellites in low Earth orbit.
7,500 active satellites and I still can’t get a decent broadband competitor in a dense urban center.
10: The "absolute limit" on the human life span: probably 120 to 150 years.
Sometimes I wonder what’s the absolute limit on the human lifetimes spent on slashdot, it was those kinds of thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools.
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9: How many active satellites currently orbit the planet? As of September 2021, there were around 7,500 active satellites in low Earth orbit.
Entry 9 is dumb. Orbit and Low Orbit are two different things. Non-Starlink internet sats are in geo-stationary orbit. That's not low. That's high orbit. So... what's the real fuckin' number? Or what are we really counting? Is it 7,500 sats in ORBIT or is it 7,500 sats in LOW ORBIT?!?
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8: How long would it take to walk around the moon? At 4 hours a day, it would take about 547 Earth days, or about 1.5 years.
How is this useful without specifying the average walking speed on the moon expressed in something straightforward like beard/seconds?
For those interested in this subject, there's a nice short story [baen.com] about it (available in full).
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The "absolute limit" on the human life span: probably 120 to 150 years.
They had to exclude Bernie Sanders from this one obviously, the only senator to remember what life was like under George III.
And possibly also Julius Caesar.
How Many Slashdot Dupes for the Year? (Score:1)
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So what's the answer? (Score:2)
They counted the number of African Elephants, but the number wasn't included in the submission?
Maybe they got confused because the number tripled during the first half of 2006.
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How well can the satellites see into strawberry patches?
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hey counted the number of African Elephants, but the number wasn't included in the submission?
Probably because the AI couldn't reliably distinguish African from European Elephants (whether or not they were carrying coconuts)
Counting elephants from space seems like a waste (Score:4, Funny)
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So much easier to count the footprints in butter.
Except that elephants walk in single file.
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So much easier to count the footprints in butter.
Except that elephants walk in single file.
To hide their numbers -- they're Sand People [fandom.com], I mean, Sand Elephants
Friends paradox (Score:2)
This is not a paradox, it is bloody obvious, and I remember thinking that when I was 11. Our geography teacher (a fool) asked us how many children we had in our families. He counted them up, weighted by the number of children, divided the total by the number of boys in the room and announced that the average was very high compared with the national average of children per family. There again he admitted that he was saving up for a set of Tonka trucks. He must have had photos...
What If? (Score:2)
Did the submitter spend 2021 discovering Randall Munroe's book / web series What If? https://what-if.xkcd.com/ [xkcd.com] sounds like the kind of stuff that he calculates.