Katie has asked two questions before — On Pessimism and On Doing Things — and she seems to be quite inquisitive. There’s still a backlog of questions just from her, so this post addresses some of them. Eight of them, to be exact.

I’ll answer four at a time in a special Back-to-Back Katie Edition of Ask Peter!

On Asking Peter

Have I asked you enough questions yet?:0)

Of course not!

No one can ask me enough questions! Asking me a question is a perfect win-win-win-win situation. Both the question asker, the reader, the researcher, and me win!
* You get your question answered, getting you the answer without you having to do research.
* The reader gets entertaining questions, and answers to things they may have not thought.
* The researcher can Google for these questions, seeing answers to stuff that may not be on the web.
* I get an idea for a post, as well as the ability to write a post that takes less time than normal.

So more questions is better! Keep them coming. Maybe even you could have your own edition, by clicking on this link here:

On Twenty-Ten

Why pronounce it twenty-ten? Is there a reason besides the fact that it sounds cooler?

Actually, more-or-less yes! Adam asked this question in our previous edition, and it was determined that we should say “twenty-ten” because it has better rhythm.

So it’s pronounced Twenty-Ten because it does sound, in fact, cooler! Twenty-Ten also sounds more futuristic sounding.

The other reason is for standardization. Eventually you won’t be saying “two thousand one hundred and thirty eight” because it’s a mouth-full compared to “twenty-one thirty-eight”.

You might a well start early on with “twenty-ten”.

On Peter Parker

Who is Peter Parker?

Peter Parker may be a variety of different real-life people depending on how you look through the phone book. In history, there have been Peter Parkers serving as the 1976-1983 chairman of the British Railways Board, a physician and interpreter, a British Admiral in the American Revolutionary War, a 1810 Member of British Parliament, A Cricket Umpire, and a Canadian radio announcer.

But the most famous Peter Parker is the kid who puts on a costume and becomes Spider-Man. Just like Clark Kent and Superman, Peter Parker is Spider-Man’s real-life alter-ego. He is described as a science-whiz nerdy teenager, who is orphaned and living with his aunt and uncle in the Forest Hills section of New York City. He was bitten by a radioactive spider, giving him spider-related superpowers, such as the ability to cling to walls, superhuman strength, a “spider-sense” that gives him increased intuition, and the ability to shoot spiderwebs.

On The Center of the Earth

What color is the center of the earth? Do they have light waves there?

Earth’s center is it’s “inner core”, which is the hottest part of the Earth. It is a mostly-solid sphere about 1220 km in radius, a little bigger than that of Pluto. It is believed to consist of an iron-nickel alloy (but no one knows for sure), and it may have a temperature similar to the Sun’s surface.

As for colour, no sunlight can penetrate that much rock. However, if you were to take a flashlight down there, made a hole so you could see, and lived to tell the tale, it’s possible you would see iron-nickel as the colour it would be if it was hit by sunlight — some sort of metallic grey.

Geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon has hypothesized that at the very center of Earth is a small uranium core about 8km in diameter, so the exact center could be the colour of uranium — a silver-white.

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