Science Memes

11068 readers

2877 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

249

Science memes (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (12 children)

I have so many questions about that freaking creature. Can it partially unfold to reach anything arbitrarily far away? And how would it go about washing it's infinite surface area?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (7 children)

That depends on the decay factor of one centaur to the next. If the centaurs shrink by anything more than a factor of two, then no. The creature will converge onto a single length.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Should be anything less than a harmonic decrease (that is, the nth centaur is 1/n the size of the original).

The harmonic series is the slowest-diverging series.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The assumption is that the size decreases geometrically, which is reasonable for this kind of self similarity. You can't just say "less than harmonic" though, I mean 1/(2n) is "slower".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Eh, that's just 1/2 of the harmonic sum, which diverges.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but it proves that termwise comparison with the harmonic series isn't sufficient to tell if a series diverges.