Related papers: Supercentenarian paradox
Gott has promulgated a rule for making probabilistic predictions of the future duration of a phenomenon based on the phenomenon's present age [Nature, Vol. 363, 315 (1993)]. I show that the two usual methods for deriving Gott's rule are…
It is widely acknowledged that the biomedical literature suffer from a surfeit of false positive results. Part of the reason for this is the persistence of the myth that observation of a p value less than 0.05 is sufficient justification to…
In this paper we consider two branching processes living in a joint random environment. Assuming that both processes are critical we address the following question: What is the probability that both populations survive up to a large time…
In this PhD thesis the ancient question of determinism ('Does every event have a cause ?') will be re-examined. In the philosophy of science and physics communities the orthodox position states that the physical world is indeterministic:…
A new solution to the Fermi Paradox is presented: probes or visits from putative alien civilizations have a very low probability until a civilization reaches a certain age (called the Contact Era) after the onset of radio communications. If…
Since 1990 Jeanne Louise Calment has held the record for human longevity. She was born on 21 February 1875, became the longest-lived human on 12 May 1990 when she was 115.21 and died on 4 August 1997 at age 122.45 years. In this chapter, we…
The Lindy effect is a statistical tendency for things with longer pasts behind them to have longer futures ahead. It has been experimentally confirmed to apply to some categories, but not others, raising questions about when it is…
We study the the survival probability P(t) upto time t, of a test particle moving in a fluctuating external field. The particle moves according to some prescribed deterministic or stochastic rules and survives as long as the external field…
The doomsday argument is a probabilistic argument that claims to predict the total lifetime of the human race. By examining the case of an individual lifetime, I conclude that the argument is fundamentally related to consciousness. I derive…
By introducing the notions of living and dead nodes a new model of random tree evolution with continuous time parameter has been constructed. It is assumed that two random variables, the lifetime and the offspring number of living nodes…
In this article, we present several formulas that make it easier to compute the net single premiums when the mortality force over the fractional ages is assumed to be constant (C). More precisely, we compute the moments of the random…
In studies on lifetimes, occasionally, the population contains statistical units that are born before the data collection has started. Left-truncated are units that deceased before this start. For all other units, the age at the study start…
Although many solar systems have been discovered, only one example of life is known. Thus, terrestrial life represents merely one data point. Consequently, extrapolating from terrestrial life to life elsewhere in the galaxy and beyond is…
Consider a discrete-time one-dimensional supercritical branching random walk. We study the probability that there exists an infinite ray in the branching random walk that always lies above the line of slope $\gamma-\epsilon$, where $\gamma$…
In order to understand the phenomenon of longevity in biological world, the relationship between the potential of longevity and the structural complexity of an organism is analyzed. I. The potential of longevity is the maximum lifespan of…
Supersymmetry remains compelling theory over 30 years in spite of lack of its discovery. It could be already near the corner our days, therefore present and upcoming experiments are crucial for constraining or even discovery of the…
Most stars in the Universe are red dwarfs. They outnumber stars like our Sun by a factor of 5 and outlive them by another factor of 20 (population-weighted mean). When combined with recent observations uncovering an abundance of temperate,…
The observation that we are among the first 10^{11} or so humans reduces the prior probability that we find ourselves in a species whose total lifetime number of individuals is much higher, according to arguments of Carter, Leslie, Nielsen,…
The ability of a planet to maintain surface water, key to life as we know it, depends on solar and planetary energy. As a star ages, it delivers more energy to a planet. As a planet ages it produces less internal heat, which leads to…
We consider random walks amongst random conductances in the cases where the conductances can be arbitrarily small, with a heavy-tailed distribution at 0, and where the conductances may or may not have a heavy-tailed distribution at…