In these day of Coronavirus isolation, let’s take a few moments off the daily grind of dreary news and read some enlightening works by a bunch of very creative scientists, who had some free time on their hand to write a number of outstanding scientific “papers” for April Fool’s Day earlier this week.
Here is the list of papers I am aware of; I am sure there are more.
- "Defining the Really Habitable Zone" — arxiv.org/...
- "Searching for Space Vampires with TEvSS" — arxiv.org/...
- "Making It Rain: How Giving Me Telescope Time Can Reduce Drought" arxiv.org/...
- "Novel approach to Room Temperature Superconductivity problem" — arxiv.org/…
- "Quantum Godwin's Law" — arxiv.org/...
We will dig into a couple of these papers. Note that most of the text is just excerpts copied as is from the papers. Please read the full papers at a leisurely pace to seriously enjoy them!
Defining the Really Habitable Zone
The authors from the University of Oxford define the Really Habitable Zone (RHZ) for exoplanets, as the region around a star where acceptable gins and tonic are likely to be abundant!
Here are a few excerpts from the superbly written journal-quality paper —
“Astronomers have long been interested in alcohol. Shortly after the introduction of gin to the UK, Flamsteed made the first observations of Uranus but mistook it for a star; we suggest a connection between these two events. In the twentieth century, papers by Coburn (1932) and Phenix & Littell (1933) discuss the use of alcohols to treat photographic plates, though they remain silent on its use in treating astronomers. Ball et al. (1972) detected methanol, though this is - in space, as on Earth - clearly undrinkable. Luckily, Zuckerman et al. (1975) soon found ethanol.
It is therefore clear that conditions which support the creation of decent beverages will also support astronomers, which is a working definition of civilization.”
Here is a note on the figure — “We had planned to carry out a statistical test to determine whether the populations of planets within and without the Really Habitable Zone were really different. However, the undergraduate student we’d expected to apply a Bayesian Machine Learning model has stopped answering our emails, so we merely suggest you follow astronomical tradition and look at the graph for a few seconds before drawing sweeping conclusions from it.”
The authors go on to discuss in great mathematical detail the astronomical methods for detecting juniper bushes, citrus and tonic in far away planets.
The paper concludes with this call for action — “We suggest that planets in the Really Habitable Zone be early targets for the JWST, because by the time that thing finally launches we’re all going to need a drink.”
Read the rest of the paper, with gin and tonic in hand, to get the full kick!
Searching for Space Vampires with TEvSS
Authors Maximilian N. Gunther and David A. Berardo of MIT discuss their research into detecting tidally locked space vampires, trapped in the gravitational pull of late M-dwarf stars. They searched for lightcurves from the Transiting Exo-Vampire Survey Satellite TEvSS. The authors suggest more funding for the James Webb Space-Vampire Telescope (JWSVT) and the Extremely-Large-Vampire Telescopes (ELVTs).
The authors gravely summarize their findings thus — “Upon inspecting all candidate threshold events by eye, we identified a short list of between 0 and 394400933 potential space vampire transits. Using Bayesian evidence, we determined that two of these most likely originated from bats (or noise), while one was more likely due to humanoid shapes (or noise). The remaining 0 to 394400930 could be due to either shape (or noise).”
The authors conclude thus — “We developed models for space vampire transits on cool dwarf stars, and pretended to have conducted an extensive search for their signals. We showed that the space vampire occurrence rates lie between 0% and 100% (or more). It is comforting to know that it cannot be less than that (albeit possibly more than that), and we consider this a major break through on our side. More funding is welcome.”
Making It Rain: How Giving Me Telescope Time Can Reduce Drought
Astronomer Michael B. Lund of CalTech demonstrates that during times when he used the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County for making astronomical observations, rainfall in the area increased by over 200%! He argues that drought conditions can be reduced in many locations around the world by awarding him extended observation time at local observatories 😄
The paper ends with — “In this paper we have demonstrated how our observing runs at Palomar Observatory have corresponded with an increase in rainy nights. Our 16 nights of observing saw ∼4 inches of rain, more than three times the median expected rainfall of 1.1 inches. The chance of this much rain by chance is significantly less than 1%. We have further discussed that many premier facilities globally are located in areas that are prone to drought, spanning five continents. We believe that this provides a valuable opportunity for drought conditions to be reduced by awarding the author significant telescope time.”
Epilogue
There are many such April Fool’s Day science papers over the years. Search for them if this interests you. Heck, some of us have some extra time on our hands and we might as well learn some new science with a dash of humor and a glass of gin and tonic.
Feel free to post other science oriented April Fool’s Year papers and jokes, from this year or from years past.
Meanwhile, let’s do all we can to suppress the Coronavirus —
- Stay home
- Wash hands
- Avoid touching face
- Wear a face mask
- Social distancing
- Stay healthy
- Stay informed
- Listen to scientists, don’t listen to stupid
- Spread the message, not the virus
Stay safe, stay strong.