How old is the universe
The other day, Matthew and I were watching Nova and I asked him how old the universe was. He quickly answered "6 billion". I was quite impressed, but I had to check. So, I asked him "6 billion what?" - thinking that if he answered "miles" or "pounds" we were in trouble. But he answered "years", so I asked him how he came up with an answer that was so close to the right answer (about 13 billion). His explanation:
"Well, I figured that the universe has a birthday for each person on the planet. Since there are 6 billion people on the planet the universe is 6 billion years old."
Yup, the explanations provided by 6-year-olds :). I prefer to believe that he was thinking something along the lines of:
a) The answer must be a big number
b) A big number I know is 6 billion, that is the number of people on the planet
c) Let's try that big number, thinking it might be the answer to the question of "how old is the universe" (e.g. estalishing a 1:1 correspondence between each person and the each year of the universe)
d) Answer = 6 billion.
But when asked the weight of the earth or the number of watts produced by the sun, he had no clue. Do you? Don't google until you make a guess.