Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome back to The Border!
Quick Links Announcements
| Home | Member's Blogs |

| Enter Chat Room |

| Today's active topics |


You can also see and join us at:

TPB's YouTube Channel ~ Click to Register
The Vampire Lair on Facebook
and
MonsterVisionTV on Facebook

TPB's Quote of the Day!

We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Physicists Prove that Vampires Could Not Exist?; not so fast.......................
Topic Started: Jun 2 2009, 04:51 AM (201 Views)
Max
Member Avatar
Pickle barrel, pickle barrel, Kumquat!
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Physicists Prove That Vampires Could Not Exist

Two physicists have published an academic paper where they demonstrate, by virtue of geometric progression, that vampires could not exist, since they would almost immediately deplete their entire food supply (a.k.a, all of us).

If you've ever read Salem's Lot (or seen the lame Starsky and Hutch-era miniseries adaptation starring David Soul), then you know that after a vampire decides to settle in your town, the undead begin to multiply at an alarming rate (he bites two friends, who bite two friends, and so on, and so on…).

Putting aside for a moment the issue of how that would impact neighborhood property values, this phenomenon raises an even more pressing question: If vampires are indeed living (unliving?) among us, then shouldn't we have seen an undead population explosion by now?

Fortunately, our best minds are on the case. Physicists Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi's paper "Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality" offers a full explanation.

Efthimiou and Gandhi conduct a thought experiment: Assume that the first vampire appeared on January 1, 1600. At that time, according to data available at the U.S. Census website, the global population was 536,870,911. Efthimiou and Gandhi calculate that, once the Nosferatu feeding frenzy began, the entire human race would have been wiped out by June 1602 (thus forever changing the course of history by preventing the invention of the slide rule eighteen years later).

The physicists note:

Another philosophical principal related to our argument is the truism given the elaborate title, the anthropic principle. This states that if something is necessary for human existence, then it must be true since we do exist. In the present case, the nonexistence of vampires is necessary for human existence. Apparently, whomever devised the vampire legend had failed his college algebra and philosophy courses.

Oooh, snap! But, this gauntlet had been barely thrown down before it invited a rebuttal from mathematician Dino Sejdinovic. In his article, "Mathematics of the Human Vampire Conflict" (Math Horizons, November 2008) Sejdinovic faults Efthimiou and Gandhi's logic, since they have not "accounted for the birth-rate of non-vampires and death-rate of vampires (actually the death-death-rate since they are already dead, but when they die again they should stay dead but stop being living) due to close encounters with stakes, garlic and holy water." Moreover, "vampires are presented exclusively as greedy consumers: a rational strategy of managing their human resources is not considered."

Here, Sejdinovic cites the pioneering research conducted by Austrian mathematicians Richard Hartl and Alexander Mehlmann, who published the landmark 1982 paper, "The Transylvanian Problem of Renewable Resources," later followed up by "Cycles of Fear: Periodic Bloodsucking Rates for Vampires" (Journal of Optimization Theory and Application, December 1992). Hartl and Mehlmann argue that vampires would never be stupid enough to deplete their entire food supply, and by applying the Hopf-Bifurcation Theorem (don't ask), they demonstrate how vampires can adopt an optimal "cyclical bloodsucking strategy."

However, there is a serious flaw in the Hartl and Mehlmann model: The assumption that human beings would be docile prey. Their research provoked an outraged response from economist Dennis Snower, who in his article "Macroeconomic Policy and the Optimal Destruction of Vampires" (The Journal of Political Economy, June 1982), declared:

One wonders what conceivable interest the authors could have had in helping vampires solve their intertemporal consumption problem. The implicit assumption of the Invisible Hand (or Fang)-whereby vampires, in pursuing their own interests, pursue those of human beings as well-is of questionable validity. The study by Hartl and Mehlmann is not concerned with the macroeconomic implications of blood-sucking behavior modes. Nor does it consider the policy instruments whereby human beings can protect themselves from vampires. Instead, humans are modeled as passive receptacles of blood whose cultivation and harvest are left to vampire discretion.

Hooyah! Snower argues that the mortal world can manage its resources in a manner that keeps the undead population in check, while simultaneously promoting long-term economic growth:

A transfer of labor services from the widget sector to the stake sector reduces human welfare at present but may raise welfare in the future (since an increase in stake production reduces the vampire population and thereby increases the future labor force whereby future widgets may be produced).

Still, I'm not entirely confident in Snower's conclusions-not least because his complex mathematical proof indicates that the complete destruction of vampires would not be "socially optimal." (And you wonder why economics is known as the dismal science?)

In fact, all of these models rest upon the assumption that vampires are at the top of the undead food chain. Who says that the blood-sucking population is not kept in check by something that preys on vampires? Time to consult the zoology journals.

Mark Strauss is a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine.

Source

Obviously, these models are skewed. They do not take Lycans into account at all,for example. And what of Garlic? :lmao:
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
recondaws
Member Avatar
Newbie
[ * ]
In many vampire mythologies the victim of a vampire bite does not become a vampire unless they injest the blood of a vampire themselves. So if the model is based on Bram Stoker than the model holds no water because the victim must injest vampire blood. However if they base the model on the Blade mythos (Vampire soon after bitten) than the argument could be made. Since vampires are an intelligent creature than why would they do anything that would put their exsistance in jeopardy?
"What a lovely night. It makes me want to have a bite to drink." - Alucard
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Max
Member Avatar
Pickle barrel, pickle barrel, Kumquat!
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Agreed. These guys missed a lot of data in their model, and made assumptions from only one part of the legend.......... :)
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Deleted User
Deleted User

I don't believe vampires to be real in the sense they are a seperate "species" unto themselves. It is more of a life style chosen by people in my opinion.
Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
DealsFor.me - The best sales, coupons, and discounts for you
« Previous Topic · Mysteries and Myths · Next Topic »
Add Reply

Web Hosting Reviews
Web Hosting Reviews
Skin Created by Xarina of Rapture & Zathyus Networks Resources.
This theme is best viewed in firefox.