Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers (28 page)

Why do some objects reflect light?

“Lo” was the first message ever sent from a computer in one place to a computer in another place—an important step toward what would later become the Internet. The milestone occurred on October 29, 1969, during the inaugural test of a new computer network. Charley Kline, a student at UCLA, was trying to connect to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute, 300 miles away. He was typing “Login”—but the system crashed after the first two letters.

The project had begun seven years earlier, born out of a 1962 memo written by computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider, in which he visualized an “Intergalactic Computer Network.” U.S. Department of Defense chiefs saw the memo and hired Licklider to head up their ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). Lo and behold, Licklider was right.

It’s all about the electrons. Most objects reflect at least some of the light that falls upon them. Highly reflective surfaces, such as mirrors and calm water, have more
free electrons
—meaning that those subatomic particles can easily pass from atom to atom. In other words, they vibrate. Instead of passing the light waves into the atoms (where they’re absorbed), free electrons send the light waves back out at the same frequency on the light spectrum in which they came; the light goes in, and the same light goes out. There are two kinds of light reflection:
specular
, which results in a mirror image, and
diffuse
, which reflects only the light energy and not the image.

According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, what advancement could make humans immortal by 2040?

Sitting quietly in your seat (or throne, or wherever you may be right now), how fast are you traveling?

Nanotechnology. American author and inventor Kurzweil predicts that microscopic nanobots (tiny robots) will be zipping through our bloodstreams in the not-too-distant future, repairing damaged cells and organs. Disease and aging will become a thing of the past. Not only that, says Kurzweil, nanotechnology will be able to “back up” our memories to computers. Every day, Kurzweil takes hundreds of supplements and drinks 10 glasses each of alkaline water and green tea—that’s so he can stay alive until 2040, when he’ll be 92 years old. If he’s right, that will be just the beginning of his long life on Earth.

You’re moving at about 1,000 mph. That’s how fast the surface of the planet is rotating. But that’s just the beginning: While it spins, Earth is orbiting the sun at 67,000 mph. Meanwhile, the sun and the solar system are whirling around the center of our galaxy at about 490,000 mph. And our galaxy—along with others in the Local Group—is moving at 1.4 million mph toward a region of space that astronomers refer to as the Great Attractor. Add all those speeds together, and it’s faster than most people can fathom. What does all this mean on a cosmic scale? In your lifetime, you’ll travel almost the exact same speed and distance as the average tree.

Big words, little words, obscure words, and naughty words
.

What are you afraid of if you have
hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
?

A dilemma is a situation in which you must choose between two equally undesirable options. What’s it called if you have more than two?

Study this word carefully:
aibohphobia
. What is it a fear of?

Is
hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
the fear of monstrous hippopotamuses? Not quite. This 36-letter, 15-syllable behemoth denotes the fear of long words. Originally, it was
sesquipedalophobia
. But some clever linguists decided sesquipedalophobia just wasn’t long enough to convey the very real fear that some people suffer when confronted with brobdingnagian nomenclature (big words). We don’t know who coined this word, but whoever they were, they didn’t make any friends with the folks who write the dictionary. According to Philip Durkin, principal etymologist for the
Oxford English Dictionary
, “The
hippopotomonstro
part is clearly someone adding ‘hippopotamus’ and ‘monstrous.’ It doesn’t really follow linguistic rules. It’s sort of a joke. The label actually mocks the sufferer.”

It’s a
polylemma
—like when you’re “stranded” on the toilet and you have to choose between your hand, your shirt, and a towel. (Don’t you even dare touch that
Bathroom Reader
!)

Yo, banana boy—look at it again:
Aibohphobia
is a fear of palindromes (and the word is a palindrome itself). This slang term hasn’t yet been accepted by etymologists…or psychologists.

When Captain Kirk said his mission was “to boldly go where no man has gone before,” he violated a commonly held rule of grammar. What rule did he break, and why is it considered incorrect? (And is it really incorrect?)

Etymologically speaking, what do avocados and orchids have in common?

Captain Kirk split an infinitive—a two-word verb form, most often with the word “to” placed in front of a verb, such as “to go.” If you place an adverb in the middle, you’ve split the infinitive, as Kirk did when he said “to boldly go.” Many English teachers, and even a few grammar books, preach that it’s wrong to blithely split infinitives. This grammatical conundrum dates back to the mid-1800s when some Latin lovers (the language, not the people) argued that because the Ancient Romans didn’t split
their
infinitives, then neither should proper English speakers.