Related papers: Le Soleil se l\`evera-t-il demain ?
Suppose you look at today's stock prices and bet on the value of the first digit. One could guess that a fair bet should correspond to the frequency of $1/9 = 11.11%$ for each digit from 1 to 9. This is by no means the case, and one can…
We correct a common (but mistaken) attribution of the evaluation of the probability integral, usually attributed to Poisson, Gauss, or Laplace.
The chemical composition of the Sun is a fundamental yardstick in astronomy, relative to which essentially all cosmic objects are referenced. We reassess the solar abundances of all 83 long-lived elements, using highly realistic solar…
We present a new approach to study the properties of the sun. We consider small variations of the physical and chemical properties of the sun with respect to Standard Solar Model predictions and we linearize the structure equations to…
Sturmfels offered 100 Swiss Francs in 2005 to a conjecture, which deals with a special case of the maximum likelihood estimation for a latent class model. This paper confirms the conjecture positively.
We have explored the temporal variability of the seismicity at global scale over the last 124 years, as well as its potential drivers. To achieve this, we constructed and analyzed an averaged global seismicity curve for earthquakes of…
Consider a population evolving from year to year through three seasons: spring, summer and winter. Every spring starts with $N$ dormant individuals waking up independently of each other according to a given distribution. Once an individual…
In their seminal 1990 paper, Wasserman and Kadane establish an upper bound for the Bayes' posterior probability of a measurable set $A$, when the prior lies in a class of probability measures $\mathcal{P}$ and the likelihood is precise.…
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…
The text of Laplace, \textit{Sur l'application du calcul des probabilit\'es \`a la philosophie naturelle,} (Th\'eorie Analytique des Probabilit\'es. Troisi\`eme \'Edition. Premier Suppl\'ement), 1820, is quoted in the context of the…
On a centennial timescale, solar activity was quantified based on records of instrumental sunspot observations. This article briefly discusses several aspects of the recent archival investigations of historical sunspot records in the 17th…
We have reconstructed the sunspot group count, not by comparisons with other reconstructions and correcting those where they were deemed to be deficient, but by a re-assessment of original sources. The resulting series is a pure solar index…
Further development of the work of Obridko et al. [1] based on recent data confirms the assumption that the 25th cycle of solar activity is a medium-low cycle. Its height is expected to be $125.2\pm5.6$, and the expected date of the maximum…
It has been established that the Rieger periodicity of approximately 153 days is part of a complex of periodicities, all multiples of a basic period of approximately 25.5 days. However, it has not been clear why the sixth subharmonic of…
Polignac [1] conjectured that for every even natural number $2k (k\geq1)$, there exist infinitely many consecutive primes $p_n$ and $p_{n+1}$ such that $p_{n+1}-p_n=2k$. A weakened form of this conjecture states that for every $k\geq1$,…
We consider one dimensional random walks in random environment where every time the process stays at a location, it dies with a fixed probability. Under some mild assumptions it is easy to show that the survival probability goes to zero as…
The monthly pattern of suicides has remained a puzzle ever since it was discovered in the second half of the 19th century. In this paper we intend to "explain" not the pattern itself but rather its changes across countries and in the course…
According to classical tradition, Thales of Miletus predicted the total solar eclipse that took place on 28 May 585 BCE. Even if some authors have flatly denied the possibility of such a prediction, others have struggled to find cycles…
The question of whether the Sun is peculiar within the class of solar-type stars has been the subject of active investigation over the past three decades. Although several solar twins have been found with stellar parameters similar to those…
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:…