1622.- Algunas cosas que lei en el ultimo tiempo (1)

(En estos meses me crucé con varias publicaciones extrañas, que con 5' de tiempo extra hubiera posteado. En general me limité a guardar los links, lamentablemente^{(o no, no se)} no guardé todos...)

¿Qué pasa cuando leo el título de un paper que empieza

Velocity dispersions in a cluster of stars:...

Lo común es que lo descarte, no tengo mucho interés en la astronomía... pero si bien la mano es más rápida que el ojo, el ojo es más rápido que la conexión de internet, y termino de leer

...How fast could Usain Bolt have run?

La página ya se cerró para cuando proceso que algo raro hay ahí, así que gugleo, vuelvo, y leo el abstract:

Since that very memorable day at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a big question on every sports commentator's mind has been "What would the 100 meter dash world record have been, had Usain Bolt not celebrated at the end of his race?" Glen Mills, Bolt's coach suggested at a recent press conference that the time could have been 9.52 seconds or better. We revisit this question by measuring Bolt's position as a function of time using footage of the run, and then extrapolate into the last two seconds based on two different assumptions. First, we conservatively assume that Bolt could have maintained Richard Thompson's, the runner-up, acceleration during the end of the race. Second, based on the race development prior to the celebration, we assume that he could also have kept an acceleration of 0.5 m/s^2 higher than Thompson. In these two cases, we find that the new world record would have been 9.61 +/- 0.04 and 9.55 +/- 0.04 seconds, respectively, where the uncertainties denote 95% statistical errors.

Vale la pena leerlo, está en el arXiv.