Related papers: The Ant on a Rubber Rope Paradox

We analyse the Bell paradox from the point of view of an inertial referential frame and from the one of an accelerated frame. We calculate the distance between the two accelerated spaceships as it appears in each referential and we show…

In this paper, we argue that while the concept of a set-theoretic paradox (or paradoxical set) can be relatively well-defined within a formal setting, the concept of a set-theoretic hypodox (or hypodoxical set) remains significantly less…

Using the existence of a special quadrisecant line, we show the ropelength of any nontrivial knot is at least 15.66. This improves the previously known lower bound of 12. Numerical experiments have found a trefoil with ropelength less than…

Snake is a classic computer game, which has been around for decades. Based on this game, we study the game of Snake on arbitrary undirected graphs. A snake forms a simple path that has to move to an apple while avoiding colliding with…

We consider growing random recursive trees in random environment, in which at each step a new vertex is attached (by an edge of a random length) to an existing tree vertex according to a probability distribution that assigns the tree…

Russell's paradox is the most easily understandable way to illustrate the inconsistency of na\"ive set theory. This note proposes a direct encoding of Russell's paradox with type-in-type universe, sigma types, and either extensional…

For more than fifty years, taxonomists have proposed numerous alternative definitions of species while they searched for a unique, comprehensive, and persuasive definition. This monograph shows that these efforts have been unnecessary, and…

In this paper, we study the dynamics of a random walker diffusing on a disordered one-dimensional lattice with random trappings. The distribution of escape probabilities is computed exactly for any strength of the disorder. These…

The Stokes paradox is the statement that in a viscous two dimensional fluid, the "linear response" problem of fluid flow around an obstacle is ill-posed. We present a simple consequence of this paradox in the hydrodynamic regime of a Fermi…

We investigate theoretically the ballistic motion of small legged insects and legless larvae after a jump. Notwithstanding their completely different morphologies and jumping strategies, these legged and legless animals have convergently…

The infinite AC ladder network can exhibit unexpected behavior. Entangling the topology brings even more surprises, found by direct numerical investigation. We consider a simple modification of the ladder topology and explain the numerical…

We consider a one-dimensional simple random walk surviving among a field of static soft traps : each time it meets a trap the walk is killed with probability 1--e --$\beta$ , where $\beta$ is a positive and fixed parameter. The positions of…

The classical logical antinomy known as Richard-Berry paradox is combined with plausible assumptions about the size i.e. the descriptional complexity of Turing machines formalizing certain sentences, to show that formalization of language…

A growing or compressed thin elastic sheet adhered to a rigid substrate can exhibit a buckling instability, forming an inward hump. Our study shows that the strip morphology depends on the delicate balance between the compression energy and…

A number of papers have examined various aspects of "random random" walks on finite groups; the purpose of this article is to provide a survey of this work and to show, bring together, and discuss some of the arguments and results in this…

The unique ability of fire ants to form a raft to survive flooding rain has enchanted biologists as well as researchers in other disciplines. It has been established during the last decade that an aggregation of fire ants exhibits…

We prove that supercritical branching random walk on a transient graph converges almost surely under rescaling to a random measure on the Martin boundary of the graph. Several open problems and conjectures about this limiting measure are…

It has been known for more than 300 years that the shape of an inelastic hanging cable, chain, or rope of uniform linear mass density is the graph of the hyperbolic cosine, up to scaling and shifting coordinates. But given two points at…

Consider a random walk with a drift to the right on $\{0,\ldots,k\}$ where $k$ is random and geometrically distributed. We show that the tail $P[T>t]$ of the length $T$ of an excursion from $0$ decreases up to constants like $t^{-\varrho}$…

We provide a uniform upper bound on the minimal drift so that the one-per-site frog model on a $d$-ary tree is recurrent. To do this, we introduce a subprocess that couples across trees with different degrees. Finding couplings for frog…