Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Death Risk Rankings Provides 'Death Calculator'
The Death Risk Rankings website, created by researchers and students at Carnegie Mellon University, provides you with a means of calculating your risk of dying in the next year. As such, it is an early attempt at a Death Calculator.
It works by calculating your odds of picking a "MicroMort" - a purple ball of death - from the container that is your life.
DeathRiskRankings.org will tell you how many purple balls someone like you has in their urn... You must remember that the MicroMort estimates on this site are based on actual death certificates from the past seven years, and therefore, the website calculates death risks for the average person in each population group (or cohort). The question is, for your, age, lifestyle, and health choices, how many purple balls are in your urn? Depending on your lifestyle, your risk could be dramatically higher (if you are an obese, drunken skydiver) or lower (if you are a vegetarian aerobics instructor) than the values shown, but the results provide a good starting point to think about the risks that you face.
As it happens, the idea that it might be possible to scientifically predict when you will die is the subject of Robert Heinlein's first published story. In Lifeline, published in 1939, Dr. Hugo Pinero presents an interesting and plausible scenario for calculating the date of a person's death.
Suppose that you had a giant urn filled with one million balls (1,000,000). Some of these balls are purple and some are green. Every year, you reach into the urn and randomly draw a ball. If it is green, you will live one more year, but if it is purple, you will die within the year. We call this thought experiment the purple balls of death, and emphasize that each purple ball represents one chance in a million of dying in the next year – a MicroMort.
(Chronovitameter view of human life)
He stepped up to one of the reporters. "Suppose we take you as an example. Your name is Rogers, is it not? Very well, Rogers, you are a space-time event having duration four ways. You are not quite six feet tall, you are about twenty inches wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there stretches behind you more of this space-time event, reaching to perhaps nineteen-sixteen, of which we see a cross-section here at right angles to the time axis, and as thick as the present. At the far end is a baby, smelling of sour milk and drooling its breakfast on its bib. At the other end lies, perhaps, an old man someplace in the nineteen-eighties."Imagine this space-time event that we call Rogers as a long pink worm, continuous through the years, one end in his mother's womb, and the other at the grave..."
"Now think of our long pink worm as a conductor of electricity. You have heard, perhaps, of the fact that electrical engineers can, by certain measurements, predict the exact location of a break in a trans-Atlantic cable without ever leaving the shore. By applying my instruments to the cross-section here in this room I can tell where the break occurs, that is to say, when death takes place."
(Read more about the Chronovitameter)
In passing, I find it interesting that Dr. Pinero is yet another figure who finds himself unpopular with the insurance agencies due to the development of new technology.
Visit the Death Risk Rankings; via Livescience.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/29/2009)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 1 )
Related News Stories - (" Medical ")
Drug To Regenerate Teeth In Humans
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
Illustrating Classic Heinlein With AI
'Stasis, cold sleep, hibernation, hypothermia, reduced metabolism, call it what you will - the logistics-medicine research teams had found a way to stack people like cordwood and use them when needed.' - Robert Heinlein, 1956
Brainoware Reservoir Computation Of Biological Neural Networks
'Head cheese. Cultured brains on a slab.' - Peter Watts, 1999.
Forward CarePod The AI Doctor's Office
'It's an old model,' Rawlins said. 'I'm not sure what to do.'
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Chaffeur Robot Musashi Will Drive Your Regular Car
'What would you do,' Eric asked the robot cabdriver, 'if your wife had turned to stone, your best friend were a toad, and you had lost your job?'
Space Exporers! Now, You Can Drink Your Own Urine
'those suits they wear -- call them 'stillsuits' -- that reclaim the body's own water...'
SpaceX EVA Spacesuit Tested By Polaris Dawn Crew
'Now, except for weight and heat, the same conditions prevail in this chamber as in space.'
Automatic Bot Traffic Is 38 Percent Of HTTP Requests
'there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net...'
Shanghai Guidelines For Humanoid Robots
'Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics...'
Desktop TARS Robot From Interstellar
What's YOUR sarcasm setting?
Robots Can Now Have Smiling Faces With Human Skin
'I am a cybernetic organism...'
Virtual Rat Predicts Actual Rat Neural Activity
'..the synthetic intellects at the Place of Knowledge had far outstripped the minds of men.'
GoSun EV Solar Charger Drapes Onto Your Car
'...six square yards of sunpower screens.'
Rizon 4 Ironing Robot
'But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...'
Cognify - A Prison Of The Mind We've Seen Before In SF
'So I serve a hundred years in one day...'
Robot With Human Brain Organoid - 'A Thrilling Story Of Mechanistic Progress'
'A human brain snugly encased in a transparent skull-shaped receptacle.'
Goodness Gracious Me! Google Tries Face Recognition Security
'The actuating mechanism that should have operated by the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell...'
With Mycotecture, We'll Just Grow The Space Habitats We Need
'The only real cost was in the plastic balloon that guided the growth of the coral and enclosed the coral's special air-borne food.'
Can A Swarm Of Deadly Drones Take Out An Aircraft Carrier?
'The border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
WiFi and AI Team Up To See Through Walls
'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
