Improbable Research

Mark Ontkush did some calculations about how much power is consumed when a computer screen shows white backgrounds rather than black. He tells the story of how this played out:

In January 2007, Mark Ontkush, the owner of the ecoIron blog, suggested that a large amount of energy could be saved if Google switched their home page from white to black. The initial savings was estimated to be 3000 Megawatt-hours a year; this was later rounded down to 750 Megawatt-hours, after an error in the calculations was found….

For many academic scientists, having a list of published papers is the single most important factor that determines prestige, pay, promotions and job offers. Some scientists are more prolific than others. But one man, Yuri Struchkov, established a record of almost superhuman accomplishment. During a 10-year period he published more - far more - research papers than any other scientist on earth….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

The sixth annual Ig Nobel Tour of the UK concludes in Newcastle on Friday evening (14 March) at the Centre for Life.

For details and/or to reserve tickets, click on the image at right.

?An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,? A. Garrett Lisi, arXiv:0711.0770, November 6, 2007. The abstract reads, in full:

All fields of the standard model and gravity are unified as an E8 principal bundle connection. A non-compact real form of the E8 Lie algebra has G2 and F4 subalgebras which break down to strong su(3), electroweak su(2) x u(1), gravitational so(3,1), the frame-Higgs, and three generations of fermions related by triality. The interactions and dynamics of these 1-form and Grassmann valued parts of an E8 superconnection are described by the curvature

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Improbable Research Review” in AIR 14:1)

QUESTION: Does the phrase “porcupine density” usually pertain to the density of an individual porcupine, or to the density of numerous porcupines scattered across an expanse of land?

ANSWER: See the report:

“Estimating porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum Linnaeus, 1758) density using radiotelemetry and replicated mark-resight techniques.” O. Halem and T. K. Fuller, Zeitschrift fiir Saugetierkunde, 1999, pp. 6485-90.