I asked ChatGPT: “If every female Boebert became a parent at age 18, and had a total of four children by age 36, and half of those children were female, how many years would it take for the Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe?”
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
October 10, 2023
I asked ChatGPT:
“If every female Boebert became a parent at age 18, and had a total of four children by age 36, and half of those children were female, how many years would it take for the Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe?”
This is how it answered:
In this scenario, every female Boebert becomes a parent at age 18, has a total of four children by age 36, and half of those children are female. This means each female Boebert has two female children. To calculate how many years it would take for the Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe, we can use a similar method as in previous responses:
Start with one female Boebert.
At age 18, she has four children, half of whom (two) are female and will become parents as well.
These two female children follow the same pattern as their parent and each has four children, two of whom are female.
This process continues with each generation.
The number of female Boeberts in each generation follows a geometric progression with a common ratio of 2 (each female has 2 female children who will become parents). The total number of female Boeberts in the Nth generation is given by:
Total Female Boeberts = 1 * 2^(N-1)
We want to find the smallest N for which the total number of female Boeberts exceeds the mass of the observable universe, which we previously estimated at about 3 x 10^55 grams.
1 * 2^(N-1) > 3 x 10^55
Now, solve for N:
2^(N-1) > 3 x 10^55
N-1 > log base 2 of (3 x 10^55)
N > log base 2 of (3 x 10^55) + 1
Now, calculate N:
N > (log(3 x 10^55) / log(2)) + 1
N > (log(3) + log(10^55) / log(2)) + 1
N > (log(3) + 55 * log(10) / log(2)) + 1
N > (0.477 + 55 / 0.301 + 1)
N > (0.477 + 182.724 + 1)
N > 184.201
So, it would take approximately 185 generations of female Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe. Now, we need to estimate the total time based on an average generation time.
If we assume an average generation time of around 25 years, then:
Total time = 185 generations * 25 years/generation ≈ 4,625 years
It would take roughly 4,625 years for the Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe under these hypothetical conditions. Please keep in mind that this is a highly theoretical scenario and doesn’t account for real-world limitations or constraints.
Washington Post: The strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure
Scientists say the possibility is very remote, but they may have found evidence of an artificial structure surrounding a star 1,481 light-years away from Earth. The Washington Post reports:
The strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure
October 15, 2015
“It was kind of unbelievable that it was real data,” said Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian. “We were scratching our heads. For any idea that came up there was always something that would argue against it.”
She was talking to the New Scientist about KIC 8462852, a distant star with a very unusual flickering habit. Something was making the star dim drastically every few years, and she wasn’t sure what….
… “When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” Wright said. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”
To be sure, both Boyajian and Wright believe the possibility of alien megastructures around KIC 8462852 is very, very remote. It’s worthy of hypothesis, Wright told Slate, “but we should also approach it skeptically.”
Yet compared to the vast majority of supposed sightings of signs of extraterrestrial life, this one has some credibility….
… Volunteers marked it out as unusual in 2011, right after the program started: a star whose light curves seemed to dip tremendously at irregular intervals. At one point, about 800 days into the survey, the star’s brightness dropped by 15 percent. Later, around day 1,500, it dropped by a shocking 22 percent. Whatever was causing the dips, it could not have been a planet — even a Jupiter-sized planet, the biggest in our solar system, would only dim this star by 1 percent as it transited across…
… Scientists — at least, the ones who like to theorize about these things — have long said that an advanced alien civilization would be marked by its ability to harness the energy from its sun (rather than scrabbling over its planet’s resources like us puny earthlings). They envision something like a Dyson Sphere, a hypothetical megastructure first proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson that would orbit or even encompass a star, capturing its power and putting it to use.
Obviously, a Dyson sphere has never been spotted in real life, though they’re all over science fiction. But if one were to exist, it wouldn’t look like a metal ball around the sun — it would probably comprise a chain of smaller satellites or space habitats, something that would block its star’s light as weirdly and irregularly as the light of KIC 8462852 has been blocked. That’s why researchers who are interested in finding alien life are so excited about the finding.
Boyajian, Wright and Andrew Siemion, the director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, are now working on getting access to the massive radio dishes they can point at the star in search of the kinds of radio waves usually emitted by technology.
If they find them — well, that would be very big and very, very unlikely news.
Of course, the star in question is about 1,481 light-years away from Earth…
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