Things you don't need to know...

I (or rather another incarnation of mine) have previously told you about the synthetic element Ununoctium (atomic number) which now has got the name Oganesson, chemical sign Og. It is the heaviest element detected (produced). I also probably told you that 3 or 4 atoms had been produced so far (since 2002). I'm now happy top tell you that production capacity has increased significantly as we now have 5 (or 6) atoms of the stuff. Well, we don't have it anymore as the half-life is estimated to be around 1 millisecond.

Now, we know that 1 atom of Oganesson weighs approximately 0.0000000000000000000000488198 gram, so 5 atoms amounts to 0.000000000000000000000244099 grams. I don't know who much running the machinery costs, but I'm pretty sure it's the most expensive stuff ever produced by man.

a pibbur who after receiving his Bistmuth crystal will start collecting other elements, but who doesn't think he'll start saving for Oganesson any time soon.

a pibbur said:

Fortunately, Bismuth is one of the very few heavy metals that isn't toxic. But I probably would destroy my teeth if I started to chew it.

Click to expand...

Hm, Wikipedia told me something differently (but maybe it's just compounds?). They refer to:

"Bismuth Toxicity, Often Mild, Can Result in Severe Poisonings"

https://journals.lww.com/em-news/Fu...ity,_Often_Mild,_Can_Result_in_Severe.12.aspx

Cacheperl said:

Hm, Wikipedia told me something differently (but maybe it's just compounds?). They refer to:

"Bismuth Toxicity, Often Mild, Can Result in Severe Poisonings"

https://journals.lww.com/em-news/Fu...ity,_Often_Mild,_Can_Result_in_Severe.12.aspx

Click to expand...

You are right, of course. I should have written that it has "unusually low toxicity for a heavy metal" (Wikipedia). This sadly doesn't mean that it isn't toxic at all.

a pibbur who says thanks to the cacheperl for correcting his (pibbur's) mistake. And who is glad that he hasn't started devouring his crystal.

Wanna do something special? Something that has never been done before? And most likely will never be done again for billions and billions of years?

Shuffle a deck of cards! There is - if you do it properly so the result is as close to random as possible - an extremely small chance that a particular shuffle has been done before.

Let's check the numbers.

There are 52 ways to pick the first card from the deck. For each of those, there are 51 ways of picking the next card. so we have 52*51=2652 possible combinations of 2 cards from the deck. And we have 52*51*50= 132600 ways of picking three cards from the deck. Picking 4 cards can be done in nearly 6 and a half million ways. As we can see the number of combinations increases rapidly with the number of cards picked.

Shuffling the entire deck can be done in 52*51*50*49*48*…*4*3*2*1 ways. We have a special notation for this: 52! which is the product of every integer from 1 to 52.

52!=80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000, a number with 68 digits.

Now, lets give the entire population of the earth (7.5 billion) their own deck of cards, and lets give them the age of the universe (13.7 billion years) to repeatedly sort their decks. Let's assume that it takes 1 second to shuffle a deck properly. Then one person could shuffle a deck 60*60*24*365.25=31557600 times in a year. The entire population of the world would do approximately 236682000000000000 shuffles.

And given the age of the Universe, they would make 13700000000 times that, which gives a total of (approximately) 3242540000000000000000000000 shuffles. A huge number indeed, but still less than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000004% of the number of possible shuffles.

Hmmm. What if we give them the whole lifetime of the universe? Well, we don't know for sure how long our current universe will exist, and how it will end. We don't even know if it will end, but let's assume that it will. One estimate is that the universe will run out of hydrogen and stars will stop forming after 1-100 trillion years. So lets give them 100 trillion years. Still they would manage less than 0.00000000000000000000000000000000003% of the possible shuffles.

So, the chance that one particular shuffle has been done before is indeed extremely small.

If you want to verify that I don't make this up (I did the calculations myself, using Mathematica), you can check this link: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-c...rds-and-getting-the-same-order-of-cards-twice.

a pibbur who doesn't want to verify the above conclusions experimentally.

I've not handled a deck since the Christmas holiday poker-fest with the family, so in your honour Pibbur, I promise to lay my hands on a deck later today and do a few deep cuts!!!!

And thanks for the good memories I had while reading your above post

Who can properly shuffle a deck in 1 second? Your numbers are off Pibbur.

TomRon said:

Who can properly shuffle a deck in 1 second? Your numbers are off Pibbur.

Click to expand...

I admit there are one or two things that are not entirely realistic in what I wrote.

A pibbur who leaves the problem with the time it takes to shuffle a deck as an exercise to the reader.

PS. A good one, T. Made me laugh! DS.

Those numbers become really important when you're a Bridge player since each shuffle represents one completely different Bridge hand and I've spent years trying to either play, or study as many hands as I can. Now combine this with the differing ways people now bid Bridge hands, combined with the various possibilities you have with both play and defence and the final numbers are amazing!!

I saw a video about Bridge probabilities the other day.

The chance of 1 player being dealt a complete suit is apparently:

39,600,000,000/1

Which was almost equivalent odds to winning the lottery twice.

For all four players to get dealt a complete suit the odds are:

2,230,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000/1

Which is dramatically more unlikely than winning the lottery 4 times.

Edit: Oh, that vid also gives a figure for the 'exact same shuffle' probabilities:

80,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000/1

This is still much better odds than rolling 100 snake eyes in a row though.

And what is even more amazing is the probability of a player being dealt 13 cards in a single suit in any game in which 13 cards from a standard deck is dealt is exactly the same. So you don't even have to play bridge to enjoy those odds. Rejoice spade players.

lackblogger said:

I saw a video about Bridge probabilities the other day.

The chance of 1 player being dealt a complete suit is apparently:

39,600,000,000/1

Which was almost equivalent odds to winning the lottery twice.

For all four players to get dealt a complete suit the odds are:

2,230,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000/1

Which is dramatically more unlikely than winning the lottery 4 times.

Edit: Oh, that vid also gives a figure for the 'exact same shuffle' probabilities:

80,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000/1

This is still much better odds than rolling 100 snake eyes in a row though.

Click to expand...

Periodic table (of chemical haikus): https://vis.sciencemag.org/chemhaiku/

a pibbur who usually doesn't read poetry, but who of course makes an exception for this.

lackblogger said:

I saw a video about Bridge probabilities the other day.

The chance of 1 player being dealt a complete suit is apparently:

39,600,000,000/1

Which was almost equivalent odds to winning the lottery twice.

For all four players to get dealt a complete suit the odds are:

2,230,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000/1

Which is dramatically more unlikely than winning the lottery 4 times.

Edit: Oh, that vid also gives a figure for the 'exact same shuffle' probabilities:

80,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000/1

This is still much better odds than rolling 100 snake eyes in a row though.

Click to expand...

A good one, lackblogger.

But if you allow me a little bit of nitpicking: Probability is by definition always a number between 0 (won't ever happen) and 1 (always happens), or between 0% and 100% if you prefer percentages. So the correct way is to write for instance the "'exact same shuffle' probabilities" is 1/80,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000

Now, them term "odds" (not exactly the same, but related to probability) is a bit different. Odds can be written as 2,230,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000/1, which is usually interpreted as the odds against something happening.

As I said, just some nitpicking, it doesn't in any way affect the understanding of what you wrote.

a pibbur whose probability of nitpicking is around 0.2.

PS. I had to look up the term "snake eyes". DS.

a pibbur said:

S. I had to look up the term "snake eyes". DS.

Click to expand...

There's a song by The Alan Parsons Project with that title.


I still do wonder, however, why there is randomness at all. What purpose has it ?

I wish I could film it myself, but I'm working on it. Before I do my own take on it, one from me for Alrik


Returned home dead drunk obvoiusliy, deleted what seemed too much.

The Enigma machine was a German electromechanical cypher thingy used to encode and decode German military messages. For breaking the system, work by Polish mathematicians in the early thirties was essential. Work continues during WW2 at the British HUT.6 section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park.

I may provide more details about the system and it's breaking in a later post.

One point of interest: There are Enigma simulators available for most platforms, including Android (available from Google Play).

SVELP FMEVA ILRMP NYBQR UXAXM LGZAF PACQS IP

a pibbur said:

The Enigma machine was a German electromechanical cypher thingy used to encode and decode German military messages. For breaking the system, work by Polish mathematicians in the early thirties was essential. Work continues during WW2 at the British HUT.6 section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park.

I may provide more details about the system and it's breaking in a later post.

One point of interest: There are Enigma simulators available for most platforms, including Android (available from Google Play).

SVELP FMEVA ILRMP NYBQR UXAXM LGZAF PACQS IP

Click to expand...

How many rotors should I be looking at?

Hurls said:

How many rotors should I be looking at?

Click to expand...

Mine has got 3.

A pibbur who didn't know there were other options.

EDIT: Now he knows, thanks to an Australian.

Apparently it is a quite hit on YouTube: ASMR, ‘autonomous sensory meridian response’.
Some get a sensation in the back of their head, which spreads to the neck and the back. Some speak of ‘tingles’, or a brain orgasm. Some say they get ‘mental goosebumps’, others feel like slipping into a trance. It seems to be relaxing, helping to calm down or to get sleepy or even more focused.
You need headphones, or earphones, because of the stereo effect.
Examples:


I liked the sound of the silver abrasive sponge in the second video. It reminds me of walking on gravel, or fresh snow. The whispering does not do much to me, although it creates some sort of intimacy.

Subgenres are videos of voracious eating South-Koreans called ‘mukbang’ (the sound of that pains me, I can’t stand it), ASMR tea ceremony, ASMR roleplay, ASMR mason, ASMR doctor roleplay… wha…?!
I found out there is even ASMR Minecraft!

I just learned about this strange world, this ASMR world, that is completely new to me.
Any of you that listen to it on a regular basis?

Tried it. For some reason I found it irritating. Not sure why, but it was too … sweet, twee, soothing…. No doubt it will work for many, but apparently not for me.

a pibbur who supposes that tells something about him

PS. I do listen to sounds when going to sleep. But that is heavy rain, thunder and stormy winds. DS.

Oooh, I like that too! Though I never listen to anything when going to sleep. O and not too much thunder, please, otherwise I get scared, not at ease.
Do you have a link to windy weather sounds?