For today’s Ask Peter, you have two options:

1. ASK ME A QUESTION ALREADY!
2. …or read today’s Ask Peter!

…Actually do both. Please?

But first, let’s start the year with an oddly on-theme question.

On 2010

What will we call 2010?
– Adam

It could be called a lot of things, and I’m hoping one of those things is “awesome”. 2010 is the first year of “the future” — and you can tell some futuristic things are going to go down.

As for how to pronounce “2010″, there are two main options — either “Two thousand ten” or “Twenty ten”. We’ve been calling “2009″ “Two thosand nine” for awhile, but will 2010 continue this pattern?

You could use “two thousand” to refer to any year — even “two thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine”. You could also “twenty” to refer to any year even “twenty oh nine” for 2009, similar to what we do for 1809 — “eighteen oh nine”.

One article I read alleged that the “two thousand” pronunciation is a result only from the influences of Y2K hype and how “2001″ was pronounced in the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

If this was true, it would be countered by events such as the Vancouver Olympics, taking place in 2010, being known as “the twenty-ten Olympics”. Furthermore, Microsoft is releasing Office 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 – both pronounced “twenty ten”. However, on the flipside, car commercials refer to “two thousand ten”, and the 2010 Rose Bowl Game are referred to as “two thousand ten”.

The same article has a comment from David Crystal, author of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, who says:

Rhythm counts for everything in something like this. The closer you get to the traditional heartbeat of English rhythm, the more people subconsciously go for it. The flow of “two thousand and ten” beats “twenty ten”, but “two thousand and eleven” loses out to “twenty eleven”.

As for me, I’m calling it “Twenty ten”.

Saying Hi

hey man,
hows it going.

I know i could talk to you with google talk, but this is far more entertaining.

yeah….

enjoy
– Jake

Hi! Things are good! Thanks for asking!

The Sky

Why is the sky blue?
– jennii!♥

This question is actually a very good test of knowledge. The answer is way more than just “air particles reflect blue light”. The condensed explanation is as follows:

The Sun is constantly emitting light toward the Earth. Any given colour is characterized by frequency and wavelength. The higher this frequency, the more blue the light appears.

Sunlight is made up of all colours. When mixed, this combination of every colour appears white — but you can see the component colours with a prism, or when looking at a rainbow.

The earth’s atmosphere is filled with tiny dust and water particles that scatter the light rays. Rays with longer wavelengths are scattered less, which means the “reds” and “yellows” are passing easily through the atmosphere, while the shorter wavelengths — “blues” and “indigos” — are scattered. This scattering effect is known as Rayleigh scattering. Because the blue light is scattered in random directions, some of it reaches the planet surface, which means we see it. This is why we perceive the atmosphere as blue.

When the Sun is at a different angle, such as when setting or rising, we see the red and orange because the blue light was scattered out of our line of sight, creating a lovely blue atmosphere somewhere else.

If you need more detailed explanation, you can find some in this NASA for Kids article and here at math.ucr.edu.

If you need something even more detailed, scientific, technical, and complete with mathematical formulae, you can find basically everything here at this Wikipedia article.

Nessie

is nessie a dinosaur
– joshua d carlos

Nessie is a common name for the Loch Ness Monster, a cryptid animal like Bigfoot. I even have an article about it in my very own (and very antiquated) Encyclopedia Uselessia.

As that creature is mythical, it could be nearly anything. However, it is commonly speculated to be from a a line of long-surviving plesiosaurs, a type of carnivorous aquatic reptile, and also… a dinosaur.

While no current evidence exists for Nessie, and it’s Wikipedia article sure documents a ton of attempts to find it, but speculation remains it could be a dinosaur… or a seal… or a hoax.

All we do know is it’s one heck of a tourist attraction.

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