Everyone knows that zombies only exist in horror movies. Or do they? A new article in the University of Leicester's 'Journal of Physics Special Topics' predicts that zombies would kill almost everyone on Earth in just 100 days. Students predicted there would only be 273 survivors after three months of a zombie apocalypse. The students were not, of course, using real zombies found in fiction. Instead, they pretended that a deadly virus had infected someone and then spread around the world. They decided that one person with the virus would have a 90 per cent chance of infecting another person every day. They calculated that at that rate, the human population would fall to just 273 people by day 100.
大家都知道,僵尸只存在于恐怖電影中。僵尸真的存在嗎?萊斯特大學《物理學特別話題期刊》上一篇新的文章預(yù)測,僵尸可以在100天的時間內(nèi)把地球上所有人消滅殆盡。學生們預(yù)測,僵尸進行三個月的毀滅行動后,地球上可能只有273名幸存者。當然,學生們使用的并不是科幻小說中真正的僵尸。他們假設(shè)一種致命病毒感染了某個人,然后在世界上迅速傳播。他們假設(shè),感染了這種病毒的人每天感染另外一人的幾率為90%。按照這個比率,他們計算出,100天之后,全世界人口總數(shù)將下降到273人。
A professor at the university, Mervin Roy, explained why students did research into a zombie apocalypse, even though zombies do not exist. He said: "Every year we ask students to write short papers for the Journal of Physics Special Topics. It lets the students show off their creative side and apply some of the physics they know to the weird, the wonderful, or the everyday." He also said it gives students valuable practice in writing and reviewing academic papers. He added that the annual research tested the ability of students to apply their understanding of physics to hypothetical scenarios (imaginary situations). This could help in the future to prepare us for real-life disasters.
這所大學一位教授Mervin Roy解釋了為何學生們研究僵尸毀滅地球的問題,盡管僵尸并不存在。他說:“每年我們都要求學生為《物理學特別話題期刊》寫一篇簡短的論文。要求學生們展示出有創(chuàng)意的一面,使用他們知道的物理學知識來解釋一些怪異的,精彩的或者日常的話題。”他還表示,這讓學生有了書寫和審查學術(shù)論文的珍貴的體驗。他補充說,這種一年一度的調(diào)查研究檢驗了學生們應(yīng)用對物理學知識的理解來假設(shè)情景的能力。這可以幫助我們應(yīng)對未來真實生活中的災(zāi)難。