www.astro.umd.edu
One of my favorite blogs ever is tech writer Clive Thompson's Collision Detection which always boasts a fun collection of ephemera and techno-arcania, from the super-relevant to the delightfully fanciful. It is the latter of which we speak today: Apparently some smarty-pants scientists have proven conclusively that vampires conclusively do not exist. Here's why: Each time a vampire bites someone to feed, they turn that person into a vampire, creating a cycle that doubles and doubles and doubles again, like that famous "and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on and so on" Faberge Organics commercial from the 80's, and also like the Sorceror's Apprentice, and mitosis, kind of. It's explained more smarter here:
If a single vampire fed on a single human in the first month, this would create two vampires -- and decrease the human population by one, leaving it at 536,870,911 - 1 = 536,870,910. In the second month, those two vampires would each feed, transforming two people into vampires -- so you get four vampires and a human population of 536,870,911 - 3 = 536,870,908. So you can see where this is headed. The vampire population is increasing in a geometric progression, and the population of humans is similarly decreasing -- and at that rate, the authors calculate, the entire human population would be transformed into vampires in only 30 months. QED!
Yes, QED. Clive actually takes it further by calculating whether the vampire population in Sunnydale could have existed given the countervailing influence of a slayer to stem the exponential vampire population growth. He concludes: Yes, for about eight seasons.
Math proves that the Buffy universe harbors no more than 512 vampires [collision detection]
Ghosts, Vampires and Goblins: Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality [Cornell University Library]
Not Related But Cool Nonetheless:
The Most Ginormous Giant Squid Ever! [collision detection]
