Related papers: Le Soleil se l\`evera-t-il demain ?
Even if it tends to hide more often in the current autumnal season, our host star, the Sun, is the principal source of energy on our planet. It has a luminosity of 3.828e26 Watts, and despite that we receive only 2 parts per billion of…
It is shown that, contrary to an existing claim, the near equality between the lifetime of the sun and the timescale of biological evolution on earth does not necessarily imply that extraterrestrial civilizations are exceedingly rare.…
Toby Walsh in 'The Singularity May Never Be Near' gives six arguments to support his point of view that technological singularity may happen but that it is unlikely. In this paper, we provide analysis of each one of his arguments and arrive…
The probability that life spontaneously emerges in a suitable environment (abiogenesis) is one of the major unknowns in astrobiology. Assessing its value is impeded by the lack of an accepted theory for the origin of life, and is further…
The prediction of the final state probabilities of a general cuboid randomly thrown onto a surface is a problem that naturally arises in the minds of men and women familiar with regular cubic dice and the basic concepts of probability.…
The growth rate of solar activity in the early phase of a solar cycle has been known to be well correlated with the subsequent amplitude (solar maximum). It provides very useful information for a new solar cycle as its variation reflects…
We investigate the probability of observing a given pattern of $n$ rises and falls in a random stationary data series. The data are modelled as a sequence of $n+1$ independent and identically distributed random numbers. This probabilistic…
The solar cycle periodically reshapes the magnetic structure and radiative output of the Sun and determines its impact on the heliosphere roughly every 11 years. Besides this main periodicity, it shows century-long variations (including…
We use life annuity prices to extract information about human longevity using a framework that links the term structure of mortality and interest rates. We invert the model and perform nonlinear least squares to obtain implied longevity…
We have evolved a series of thirteen complete solar models that utilize different assumed heavy element compositions. Models that are based upon the heavy element abundances recently determined by Asplund, Grevesse, and Sauval (2005) are…
Gompertz's law tells us that for humans above the age of 35 the death rate increases exponentially with a doubling time of about 10 years. Here, we show that the same law continues to hold even for ages over 100. Beyond 106 there is so far…
Climate change communication is crucial to raising awareness and motivating action. In the context of breaching the limits set out by the Paris Agreement, we argue that climate scientists should move away from point estimates and towards…
Life arose on Earth sometime in the first few hundred million years after the young planet had cooled to the point that it could support water-based organisms on its surface. The early emergence of life on Earth has been taken as evidence…
The variation of total solar irradiance (TSI) has been measured since 1978 and that of the spectral irradiance for an even shorter amount of time. Semi-empirical models are now available that reproduce over 80% of the measured irradiance…
The Faint Young Sun Paradox comes from the fact that solar luminosity (2-4)x10^9 years ago was insufficient to support the Earth's temperature necessary for the efficient development of geological and biological evolution (particularly, for…
Prediction of solar cycle is an important goal of Solar Physics both because it serves as a touchstone for our understanding of the sun and also because of its societal value for a space faring civilization. The task is difficult and…
Consider the following statement: $B(t, \Delta t)$: a $t$ years old person NN will survive another $\Delta t$ years, where $t, \Delta t\in \mathbb{R}$ are nonnegative real numbers. We know only that NN is $t$ years old and nothing about the…
Hoyt & Schatten (1998) claim that Simon Marius would have observed the sun from 1617 Jun 7 to 1618 Dec 31 (Gregorian calendar) all days, except three short gaps in 1618, but would never have detected a sunspot -- based on a quotation from…
We present a reconstruction of total solar irradiance since 1610 to the present based on variations of the surface distribution of the solar magnetic field. The latter is calculated from the historical record of the Group sunspot number…
There are four important facts about solar neutrinos. They are listed in order of importance in this abstract and discussed more in the text of the talk. First, solar neutrinos have been detected in four experiments with approximately the…