Via arxiv.org: ‘We use a popular fictional disease, zombies, in order to introduce techniques used in modern epidemiology modelling, and ideas and techniques used in the numerical study of critical phenomena. We consider variants of zombie models, from fully connected continuous time dynamics to a full scale exact stochastic dynamic simulation of a zombie outbreak on the continental United States. Along the way, we offer a closed form analytical expression for the fully connected differential equation, and demonstrate that the single person per site two dimensional square lattice version of zombies lies in the percolation universality class. We end with a quantitative study of the full scale US outbreak, including the average susceptibility of different geographical regions.’
Via Gizmodo: ‘A study published in Nature Geoscience finds that warm seawater is likely getting under an East Antarctica glacier and melting it from below. If the glacier’s ice shelf melts, runway melting could cause another 11 feet of sea-level rise—that’s on top of previous estimates.’
Via Gizmodo: ‘If you’re like me, you’ve spent years heeding forecasters telling you that the northern lights will DEFINITELY be visible tonight—and then seeing nothing but boring old night sky. Tonight, summon your faith and give it one last shot: There’s a severe geomagnetic storm going on.’
