Quick, What Is Time?

Last year, Alan Alda, the actor, asked, ?What is a flame?? and more than 800 people answered.

It was a challenge to scientists to explain a complex phenomenon in terms that an 11-year-old could understand.

Mr. Alda, who has long had a deep interest in science, played a key role in the founding of the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, and the center turned his question into a contest. An American physics graduate student at the University of Innsbruck in Austria won. His prize is a trip to the World Science Festival in New York in May. This year, the center has a new challenge: What is time?

The center had invited 11-year-olds to come up with questions. Among the 300 entries were ?How does the brain store information?? and ?Why are Shetland ponies so small??

While flames are a well-understood, albeit difficult to explain, phenomenon, the nature of time is still a mystery.

?What it will help show is that science is not just a collection of facts, but a way of trying to understand the true nature of reality,? Carl Safina, a chairman of the center?s steering committee, said. ?By that, I mean it isn?t a settled question about what time really is, but there are scientific responses to the question.?

The deadline for entries, at flamechallenge.org, is March 1. Again, 11-year-olds will decide the winner.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/science/quick-what-is-time.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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