Mathematical Optimism

Mathematical Optimism

I'm currently reading two books:  "Prime Numbers and The Riemann Hypothesis" by Barry Mazur and William Stein and also the book: "The Humans A Novel" by Matt Haig.

The book on the Riemann Hypothesis is wonderful and I recommend it highly. 

I also enjoy Science Fiction and thinking about 'Life the Universe and Everything'.

Science Fiction about how aliens actually think and Science Fiction that envisions how Artificial Intelligence works many times have the same feel to them.  

The book "The Humans A Novel" is about how an alien could possibly react when exposed to humans. It also has as a plot device the idea that there is a solution to the Riemann Hypothesis.  The perspective is from the alien's viewpoint.  I highly recommend this book.

In the book the main character observes that human lifespan is around 30,000 days. 

That got me to thinking:  If we lived on average 30,000 days then ...

30,000 divided by 365.25 is 82.136 (A little over 82 years)

0.136 times 365.25 then divided by 30 is 1.656 (A little over a month and a half)

0.656 times 30 is 19.68 (A little over 19 and a half days)

0.68 times 24 is 16.32 (Around  4:20 pm)

0.32 times 60 is 19.2 (Just a bit over 19 minutes)

0.2 times 60 is 12 (That is 12 seconds)

In a few days I will encounter the 69th anniversary of the date of my birth which occurred on the 15th of May, 1947.

In thirteen years I will be near the point where I will encounter my eighty second anniversary of the day of my birth.

The month of June has 30 days.

The 15th of June is therefore 15 days from the end of June.

This means that July the fourth is 19 days from the 15th of June.

Putting this all together At 4:19 and twelve seconds in the afternoon of the 4th of July in the year of 2029 I will have aged about 30,000 days.

I am in excellent health. I engage in around five an a half hours of aerobic exercise a week.  I don't have heart trouble.  I am a bit overweight and have osteoarthritis in my knees but manage it with my exercises which consist of swimming and biking.  I've already out lived 50% of my grandparents and my parents, the other 50% of which lived to their early to mid 80's.  Also, healthy living behaviors during the years before the ones when they passed on were not nearly as sophisticated as the ones we have these days, not to mention the ones we will adopt in the coming years.

So I'm thinking 12 seconds past 4:19 in the afternoon of the 4th of July 2029 could be a nice day for me to celebrate the coming of even more days.

NOTE: According to the social security actuarial tables my current expected lifespan is 30,681 days so that gives me another one year, ten months, fifteen days, and eighteen hours.  So tacked on to the date above that means that 12 seconds past 9:19 in the morning of the 2nd day of June 2031 could equally be a nice day for me to celebrate the coming of even more days.

NOTE: One more interesting number:  There are about 10^-43 seconds in one unit of planck time (the smallest division of time).  Which means there are about 2.592 x 10^52 planck units in a human lifetime.  The universe is about 13.5 billion years old so that comes out to be 4.260 x 10^60 planck units.  Which means that the universe is only eight orders of magnitude older than the average human's lifespan.

So we should all enjoy our 2.592 x 10^52 heartbeats of the universe.  Written out with all the zeros that comes out to be

2,592,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000