Related papers: Supercentenarian paradox
Family history is usually seen as a significant factor insurance companies look at when applying for a life insurance policy. Where it is used, family history of cardiovascular diseases, death by cancer, or family history of high blood…
The anthropic principle implies that life can emerge and be sustained only in a narrow range of values of fundamental constants. Here we show that anthropic arguments can set powerful constraints on {\em transient} variations of the…
The question of why we age is a fundamental one. It is about who we are, and it also might have critical practical aspects as we try to find ways to age slower. Or to not age at all. Different reasons point at distinct strategies for the…
Author's early work on aging is developed to yield a relationship between life spans and the velocity of aging. The mathematical analysis shows that the mean extent of the advancement of aging throughout one's life is conserved, or…
In many growing networks, the age of the nodes plays an important role in deciding the attachment probability of the incoming nodes. For example, in a citation network, very old papers are seldom cited while recent papers are usually cited…
A pair of probability distributions over $\{0,1\}^n$ is said to be $(k,\delta)$-wise indistinguishable if all of the size $k$ marginals are within statistical distance at most $\delta$. Previous works introduced this concept and study when…
The study considers the model of an abstract organism, called Arbitrary Oscillator (ArbO), which is capable of making decisions at each timed step. These decisions are 'critical' since, randomly, their outcome can be 'fatal' for ArbO, thus…
In our paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 337 (1995)], we derived an exact expression for the survival and nonescape probabilities as an expansion in terms of resonant states. It was shown that these quantities exhibit at long times a different…
The likelihood principle makes strong claims about the nature of statistical evidence but is controversial. Its claims are undermined by the existence of several examples that are assumed to show that it allows, with unity probability,…
The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the strong likelihood of alien intelligent life emerging (under a wide variety of assumptions) and the absence of any visible evidence for such emergence. We use this intriguing unlikeness to…
In 1973, Neil Sloane published a very short paper introducing an intriguing problem: Pick a decimal integer $n$ and multiply all its digits by each other. Repeat the process until a single digit $\Delta(n)$ is obtained. $\Delta(n)$ is…
Aggregated health data such as claims data from health insurances become more and more available for research purposes. Estimates of excess mortality from prevalence and incidence of a chronic condition have only been possible for ages 50…
Standard evolutionary theories of aging and mortality, implicitly based on assumptions of spatial averaging, hold that natural selection cannot favor shorter lifespan without direct compensating benefit to individual reproductive success.…
The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high probability extraterrestrial civilizations' existence and the lack of contact with such civilizations. In general, solutions to Fermi's paradox come down to either estimation…
If a civilization wants to maximize computation it appears rational to aestivate until the far future in order to exploit the low temperature environment: this can produce a $10^{30}$ multiplier of achievable computation. We hence suggest…
Is it possible for a large sequence of measurements or observations, which support a hypothesis, to counterintuitively decrease our confidence? Can unanimous support be too good to be true? The assumption of independence is often made in…
It is sometimes assumed that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. Here we critically examine the assumptions inherent in this if-life-evolved-rapidly-life-must-be-common argument. We use the…
The probability of detecting technosignatures (i.e. evidence of technological activity beyond Earth) increases with their longevity, or the time interval over which they manifest. Therefore, the assumed distribution of longevities has some…
Oscillons are localized states of scalar fields sustained by self interactions. They decay by emitting classical radiation, but their lifetimes are surprisingly large. We revisit the reasons behind their longevity, aiming at how the shape…
Frullani's integral dates from 1821, but a probabilistic interpretation of it has never been made. In this paper, Frullani's integral formula is shown to result from mixing a lifetime distribution by allowing the logarithm of the scale…