easter

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The Pataphysics

of Googologically Fast Easter Bunny Duplication

An Osterus oryctolagus cunicululus,

colloquially known as an Easter Bunny

The prolific duplication capabilities of bunnies is well known, but the full extent of the problem is not often fully appreciated. Bunnies have been shown, in limited alternative pseudo-scientific studies, to sometimes multiply at a rate faster than exponential! Some of these studies suggest at least factorial growth, and one case even demonstrated (2n)^n growth! In fact, a pair of rabbits can produce 500,000 offspring in as little as 2 years!

If Bunnies are bad, Easter Bunnies (scientific name: osterus oryctolagus cunicululus) are googologically more so. Mathematicians and scientists are still busy at work on the problem of providing a relatively tight upper-bound for the duplication growth rate of Easter Bunnies. So far, all such attempts have fallen vastly short of the mark. The best we can seem to do is provide better and better lower bounds. The only known upper-bound is so big as to be completely useless. It has been proven by mathematicians working for the National Inquirer that Easter Bunny duplication is slower than the growth rate of most Sam functions. This revelation however is next to useless however since Sam functions produce "Sam Numbers" even for small arguments (less than 100). Sam Numbers are just ... indescribable. This suggests that perhaps the growth rate is at least describable, but even this is not a certainty. All that is known is that the growth rate is at least impredicative, and the numbers involved are way way bigger than little piddling numbers like gorgonghoulgog and transmorgrifihgh.

But where do Easter bunnies come from? It is a common misconception that they come from another universe, one of googological dimensions to house all of these "super rabbits", but they in fact come from our own universe. It is a little known fact that the universe is actually infinite, and has always been so. This was known at least as far back as the pythagoreans, but they were ridiculed in their own time for holding the belief. It has always been the general folk wisdom that the universe is finite, or else how could the Great (long-eared) One have made it in a week? This was not helped when Julius Caesar declared the universe finite for the whole roman empire, which was practically the whole world at the time, except for a few odd localities like Australia and the United States. In any case the truth of the infinite universe has survived as fact among the descendants of the pythagoreans but remains not widely known. In the 20th century, only Albert Einstein was brave enough to even suggest that the universe was infinite when we quipped "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity ... and I'm not sure about the universe". Some have suspected that Einstein was a pythagorean, not it's never been confirmed.

Another important fact about the universe is "anything that can happen, will happen ... infinitely often". Murphy was the first to expound the law, and in so doing ushered in the age of quantum mechanics. Granted, the existence of Easter Bunnies is highly improbable. How does one bunny manage to bring baskets of candy and toys to all the children of the whole world in one night? Two words ... quantum teleportation. Rabbits are already known for their lightning fast speed, but Easter Bunnies are so fast they leave lightning googologically in the dust! An Easter Bunny can travel further in a nanosecond than light can travel in a hundred thousand million billion trillion years, and that's not an exaggeration, it's an absurd understatement. Consequently, contrary to popular opinion, the Easter Bunny doesn't actually take the whole night to deliver all the easter baskets. The easter baskets are delivered instaneously across the world, always precisely where no one is looking. So don't try staying up all night hoping to catch a glimpse. The basket will just appear behind you or in another room. In short, the Easter Bunny is so fast you'll never see it coming! The Easter Bunnies quantum teleportation abilities are the main reason for the myth that the Easter Bunny comes from another dimension. The Easter Bunny typically creates a wormhole to the earth at sunset on Easter eve, but the other end is not part of an alternate "easter bunny dimension" as many have speculated, but rather just a googologically remote part of our own universe! This is so remote, so out of reach however that it might as well be an alternate dimension. No space craft in existence, even FTL and hyperspace drives can have any hope of accessing these regions. Even the fastest commercial vehicles rarely travel above warp 9.0, which is enough to make a roughly 2 hour trip down to Andromeda. Highly classified documents confirm however than even the fastest military FTL ships have only achieved a record speed of warp 27.0, which can pass through the diameter of the observable universe in less than 3 nanoseconds! Furthermore, experts in the field agree that FTL will never get close to warp 100 and that the design limit is probably less than warp 50. But even a warp 100 FTL drive would be insignificant to the distance to the nearest Easter Bunny litter, because the distance is googologically large, requiring a googologically large warp speed to reach in a non-googological amount of time! So it is safe to say we will never reach the nearest liter of Easter Bunnies (in fact if we could we'd be dead right now!) and yet the universe is full of an infinite number of them.

But wait, you say, how could even one Easter Bunny exist in a universe only 13.7 billion years old. That's simply not enough time for easter bunnies to evolve from single celled organisms. Tornadoes passing through junkyards and creating Boeing 747s and that sort of thing. This is true. No Easter Bunny has ever been the result of evolution. Some fundamentalists have argued that this is incontestable proof of a creator. For the Easter Bunny, they argue, is a dead give-away. Nothing so mind bogglingly fleet-footed could have ever evolved by chance, so it proves he exists. Some philosophers have argued the opposite however, pointing out that the creator would never be so blatantly obvious because it would eliminate the need for faith ... therefore the creator could not exist. What both the fundamentalist's and philosophers seem to forget, however, is that the universe is infinite. In an infinite universe anything is possible in any time scale ... and will occur infinitely often. Easter Bunnies simply pop into existence spontaneously in remote regions of the universe due to quantum indeterminacy. Most of the time only a single one will emerge and simply die, because it lacks a mate. However once is a VERY rare while two will emerge in close proximity and then the duplication sky-rockets at a googologically alarming rate. This is possible simply because regardless of how improbable an Easter Bunnies existence is, there is an unlimited amount of space for quantum indeterminacy to roll the dice of existence. Thus it is guaranteed that somewhere, an easter bunny will pop into existence. Keep in mind that if a pair were to pop into existence here, the world, in fact the entire observable universe would be destroyed and completely converted into Easter Bunnies in an instant. This is why it is strictly forbidden to have more than a single Easter Bunny per Friedmann bubble.

Some fool-hardy individuals have thought of breeding Easter Bunnies, or keeping them as pets, certain that with the correct protective measures, they could be controlled. All have failed, there is no way to contain the insane rate of growth once it has reached critical mass. Critical mass has generally been measured at 10. Don't think that you can somehow prevent them from breeding past 10 though! Many have made that mistake. Easter Bunnies are known to hide their easter eggs in remote galaxies whenever you blink. After the first few days, there will be more than 10. Once that happens, your doomed. Some have attempted to ensure that their stock of Easter bunnies were only of one sex. This can't work however because Easter Bunnies can flip gender at will. They are all essentially hermaphrodites. This is why all Easter Bunnies can lay easter eggs. The only sure fire way to prevent the easter bunny apocalypse is to never have more than one. That is why it is always the Easter Bunny, and never easter bunnies. Only in the phantom zones of bunny-space do they exist in clusters greater than one. It should be fairly obvious at this point that the only possibilities here are zero, one, or googologically many. You'll never see a small number of easter bunnies (less than 100) for more than a nanosecond.

So how many Easter Bunnies are there in the universe? Technically there is an infinite number of easter bunnies, because the universe is itself infinite. Why then are we not packed wall-to-wall with Easter Bunnies? This was one of the many perplexing mysteries of antiquity, but modern mathematics has provided the answer: natural density. Even though the number of Easter Bunnies and the available space are both infinite, all space is not occupied by Easter bunnies because of the very low natural density. In this case natural density can be thought of as the average distance between any two easter bunnies. Alternatively it can be thought as the percentage of occupied space in any sufficiently large arbitrary volume. This percentage is smaller than 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. In fact no one quite knows exactly how small it is, but it has to be googologically small to account for the fact that despite how googologically fast Easter Bunnies duplicate that we are not currently swimming in them. However such an eventuality is actually inevitable. Since there is an infinite number of isolated easter bunny litters all growing in size googologically fast, eventually all of these litters will inevitably collide with each other and fill up every cubic inch of volume in the known and unknown universe! When this happens the Easter bunny apocalypse will be upon us and the universe will end in "heat death" due to an over-abundance of warm furry bodies. William Thomas was the first to realize this in 1851. Since

(Easter Bunnies preparing for the bunny apocalypse)

then end of the world cults have sprung up waiting for the so called "bunny apocalypse". It has yet to come to fruition, which has proved to be a perplexing problem for pataphysicists. In fact, the bunny apocalypse should have been extremely swift and the universe should never have made it to it's 2nd Anniversary.

The improbability of spontaneous osterus oryctolagus cunicululus combustion can be estimated to be roughly chenchiwahwah-ometochtli to one. The growth rate of osterus oryctolagus cunicululus is such that in 2 years a pair of osterus oryctolagus cunicululus can produce a chenchiwahwah-ometochtli offspring (this involves roughly a chenchiwahwah-ometochtli generations of offspring). It is not known precisely how large a chenchiwahwah-ometochtli is but most experts believe that it is probably a computable number, but know one has yet been able to build a computer to compute it. A minority of computer scientists however has theorized that it may exist in the indescribable portion of the number line known as Sam-space. No one knows for sure. If it is computable it is speculated to be well beyond current order-type notations, probably passing up SVO,LVO, BHO, and even TFB. Regardless of whatever size it turns out to be however, since the improbability of the existence of the easter bunny is googologically proportional to the number of Easter Bunnies that can be produced by a pair in 2 years, it inescapably follows that the universe should have reached a natural density of 1.0, 2 years after the big bang. One way to counter this is to note that the improbability is actually slightly larger (though googologically close) to the number of easter bunnies that a pair can produce in 2 years. The improbability is probably fairly close to 10^chenchiwahwah-ometochtli. However the problem remains because the growth rate is so rapid that in another 6 months the population is bound to exceed any elementary extension (or even advanced extension) of chenchiwahwah-ometochtli. Thus it is said, the universe could never exist past it's 3rd year ... and yet it persists to this day ... 13.7 billion years later! The fact that the bunny apocalypse has not happened, and continues to continually not happen has been a major problem for cosmologist's that makes the boltzmann brain problem look like a cake-walk!

Some savvy fundamentalist's, with book lines, t-shirts and video series, have argued that this proves that the universe is finite and that a (long-eared) creator caused the big bang. In a finite universe, say the size of the observable universe, the argument goes, the odds of even a single osterus oryctolagus cunicululus popping into existence within the 13.7 billion years since the big bang is googologically nil. Thus this would account for the lack of proliferation. On the other hand, the well established existence of the easter bunny, via the endless cases of kids receiving easter baskets, is proof that there is at least one easter bunny in existence, which shouldn't be possible. Therefore a creator must have created him. However what is often not addressed is that the existence of a being with the capacity to create an osterus oryctolagus cunicululus is also googologically nil, so this theory still does not account for the existence of the Easter Bunny. Furthermore modern astronomical observations confirm what the pythagoreans knew all along ... the universe is infinite. So the problem remains. For this reason some wayward souls have come to the conclusion that the Easter Bunny does not exist! Or failing that, that he is a one-of-a-kind which can not have duplicates in the universe. The latter theory however can be summarily dismissed since it would violate Murphy's Law. If an Easter could exist once it must exist an infinite number of times. So the most likely counter-explanation is to simply deny the existence of the Easter Bunny by saying that not only does he not exist in our world, but he does not exist in all possible worlds.

To dispel this dangerous line of reasoning, it is only necessary to return to the historical record which is rife with countless encounters with the osterhaws, that is, our own earthbound Easter Bunny. The earliest known sighting occurred in 1682 when a rabbit was observed to completely vanish from view leaving behind pastel colored eggs in what appeared to be a nest. A year later, hundreds of millions of such nests began to show up in peoples houses on easter morning, and has continued to do so every year to this day. Scientists have noted that the tachyon count in the soil shot up dramatically around the world around this time in the late 17th century. This is strong evidence of the Easter Bunnies quantum jumps across the globe every year on Easter eve. It is not known where the easter bunny hangs out during the rest of the year but it is suspected that he keeps himself busy laying easter eggs for the following year somewhere on one of the moons of Jupiter. This theory was first proposed when it was discovered that there was high tachyon radiation coming from the direction of Jupiter. Others suspect that the Easter Bunny visits a plethora of planets throughout the year, visiting a different life-sustaining planet on each day of the year. Other theories hold that the Easter Bunny hides in the center of black holes to avoid detection by radio signal.

Many theories exist to explain why the Easter Bunny is apparently separated from his kind. The prevailing opinion is that he got lost in transit through some freak worm hole which separated him from his litter at an early age, damaged his quantum teleportation ability, and also damaged his ability to age (accounting for the fact that the easter bunny is already over 300 years old, whereas Easter Bunnies are estimated to only live for about 7 years on average). Thus he has become completely stranded and cut off from his kind. His giving out of Easter Baskets is suspected to be a distress signal meant to draw the attention of a mate. So far, no other Easter Bunny has come close enough to this place to detect the baskets. This is a good thing, because if a second Easter Bunny ever did come by ... the observable universe would become packed solid with Easter Bunnies within less than a millisecond! No one knows quite how large the Easter Bunnies' stomping grounds are and how badly damaged his quantum teleportation ability is, but he is believed to at least be able to jump a googolplex miles (or light-years or parsecs or whatever) to your nearest duplicate. There is a good chance that the Easter Bunny gives out Easter Baskets to millions of version of you each year. Yet this is all just a little garden for the average osterus oryctolagus cunicululus. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of the Easter Bunnies definitive existence are classified documents which confirm that Easter eggs were found on the lunar surface during the moon landing.

With the existence of the Easter Bunny all but firmly established the paradox is inescapable. How come the entire universe has not been filled up with Easter Bunnies already? When will the bunny apocalypse arrive? The problem is that the time of the bunny apocalypse can not be accurately predicted. It is highly sensitive to what is known as the improbability-to-duplication ratio. The evidence suggests that the improbability of an easter bunny is vastly smaller than even it's massive duplicating capacity can counter. This is unfortunately very paradoxical. As the duplication capacity increases without bound, the difference between it and the improbability of a creature with the capacity becomes negligible. It is a well known fact that the probability of cellar life emerging on any planet is about 10^40,000 to 1. This is perhaps the strongest proof that the universe is infinite. In an infinite universe this probability is no problem, and there will be a life-bearing planet approximately once every 10^40,000 light-years. This way too far away for us to actually confirm by even the fastest FTL travel, but to date no non-earth-originating life forms have ever been detected except for the Easter Bunny. All cases to the contrary, such as big foot, Santa Claus and UFOs, are most likely misinterpreted sightings of the easter bunny. Most telling is the common element of "UFO's" suddenly vanishing in the blink of an eye. Only an Easter Bunny could move that fast within the atmosphere without burning up (it does this by converting it's entire mass into neutrinos).

In any case, it can be assumed for simplicity that the ordinary hares improbability is at least 10^40,000 with a duplication function of 500^n , where n is the number of years. Let k be the number of offspring produced after 1 year from a single pair. In this case we see that the improbability is 10^40k. Thus we have a formula mapping capacity to improbability. Define the Easter Bunnies capacity to be chenchiwahwah-ometochtli offspring after 1 year from a single pair. Therefore the improbability of such an such a being coming into existence is 10^(forty chenchiwahwah-ometochtli) ~ chenchiwahwah-ometochtli. The growth rate of the easter bunny population is measured by the function ometochtli(n) for n years after a pair reaches adulthood. Thus ometochtli(1) = chenchiwahwah-ometochtli. The growth rate of ometochtli(n) is unknown, but it is definitely vastly larger than exponential, therefore ometochtli(2) >>> (10^40)^ometochtli(1). Therefore, as stated earlier, the universe could never be more than 2 years old. And so the paradox remains...

The problem probably lies in our still shaky understanding of quantum mechanics. Scientists still don't agree on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one, and don't even get me started on string theory. Until these issues are resolved we can not compute an accurate improbability-to-duplication ratio and the bunny apocalypse can not be predicted with certainty. This has not stopped people from awaiting the great time of furry doom however. Some people say this is the bunishment intended for the non-believers and that the true believers in the one true bunny-god will be whisked away to another dimension. But no astronomical observations have demonstrated that another dimension exists. Besides where could it exist, there is no space left over in an infinite universe!!!

... Just Kidding :)

Happy Easter everyone! Hope you all got a good laugh out of the spoof article. Don't worry, a real new article is already in the works and will probably be published sometime next month.

Keep counting,

Sincerely,

--Sbiis Saibian, The Megalo-arithmologist