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The Mathematics of the Lifespan of Species
skade88 writes "NPR is reporting on a study in which the author claims to have found the formula to predict the average life span of members of a species. It does not apply to specific individuals of that species, only to the average life span of members of the species as a whole. From the article: 'It's hard to believe that creatures as different as jellyfish and cheetahs, daisies and bats, are governed by the same mathematical logic, but size seems to predict lifespan. The formula seems to be nature's way to preserve larger creatures who need time to grow and prosper, and it not only operates in all living things, but even in the cells of living things. It tells animals for example, that there's a universal limit to life, that though they come in different sizes, they have roughly a billion and a half heart beats; elephant hearts beat slowly, hummingbird hearts beat fast, but when your count is up, you are over.'"
He plots lifetime in days to entity mass in grams on a log-log plot and slaps a line on it. Note that some of the scatter in the vertical axis is up to 3 *orders of magnitude*. Had this been plotted on linear scale it would have looked like Jackson Pollock sneezed on the page. All that can be extracted is that big critters tend to live longer than small critters. So what is new here?
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
"Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing."
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Wrong. By exercising one can lower their heart rate. Around 72 is generally considered the number of beats per minute. From daily exercise I lowered mine to low 50s bpm. What is the difference of the number of beats a year for example between both resting heart rates? Around 11 037 600 beats, looks quite staggering.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)