I haven’t done one of these Ask Peter series things in awhile — it’s been nearly half a year since the last one. The way it works is that people go to one of my webpages, fill out the included form, and send me a question (Yes, those three all do link to the same place, thank you for noticing). Then I answer the question, and it ends up in one of these blog posts.

I used to advertise this series a lot back in the day when I thought not having content was a terrible thing and that any content was better than no content (both of which are not usually true). Now, I kind of sit back and try to write things that make me all intellectual, but I suppose I can dip back in the mailbag from time to time and have fun. Though I will be a bit embarrassed that, with my recent reorganization of categories, Ask Peter ends up having more posts in it than any other category of mine.

Usually the questions are a combination of really stupid, and one or two that are insightful. This one will be no different. Enjoy the 20th installment of Ask Peter:

Names of Sisters

what’s my sisters name
– saffron

I wouldn’t know. If you happen to be Saffron Henderson, a Canadian voice actress and singer, your sister is Camille Henderson.

People in Rooms

how many people are in the room right now

The room? As in The Room?! NOOOOOOOO!

Richest Woman

Who is the richest woman in the world?
– Faye

Forbes recently released their 2011 Billionaire List, which includes 1210 people, up a stunning 1011 from last year. 102 of these people are women (8.4%). The richest women is Christy Walton, with a net worth of $26.5B, which she inherited most of from John T. Walton, who was a son of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart.

Hannah the Hater

Does hannah like me?
– Noah

No, Hannah has been rather temperamental these days.

Sizes to Purchase

what size do i buy

The biggest one you can get!

Time’s Passage

Does time pass at a constant speed?

This question is actually interesting, because here’s the killer question to go along with it — does time actually flow at all? This may sound like a silly question because of course we feel and perceive a passage of time, but time can also be perceived analogously as a fourth dimension of space, and you flow through time just like you flow through space when you walk around. The universe itself doesn’t progress through time just like it doesn’t progress through space — it just sits there, timeless.

This is a understandably difficult to grasp, but it is entailed by the Theory of Relativity, which leads to some weird conclusions about how time seems to flow. For example, if we take Alice and put her on a spaceship, and she flies away from Bob at very high speeds, time will “flow” slower for Alice than it does for Bob. During the trip, Alice will not notice any change in flow for herself — she still will perceive time as going normally, and won’t feel like she’s in slow motion or in fast motion. Instead, Bob will simultaneously perceive Alice as going faster through time and himself as normal while Alice simultaneously perceive Bob as going slower through time and herself as normal. When Alice gets back to Bob, she will have experienced less time passing — if Alice and Bob were both the same age when Alice left, they will no longer be the same age when Alice returns.

Why? It’s because Alice experienced less time than Bob did. If the Theory of Relativity is true, we would expect this to be the case, and guess what? It has recently been proven empirically with clocks in space. It’s true that anything that moves faster than something else will also undergo less time than that something else — but don’t worry, throughout your lifetime this will only add up to the tiniest fraction of a second difference, since you don’t go very fast on a day to day basis. You haven’t been anywhere near the speed of light.

There’s tons and lots that have been left undiscussed, but to answer your question — there is no single, fixed rate of time against which we can measure “slower” or “faster”, just like there is no single speed of travel that we can say we are running faster than. We can only say that we are running slower than Bob or faster than Alice, and this holds true for time as well. Time is relative to observers and your speed (motion through space).

Be Sociable, Share!

•