Teich's Tech Tidbit of the Week
August 9, 1999
The Post Office and the Age of the Universe

Tidbit Archive
Ever wonder why you always find yourself in the longest line at the post office (or the bank or the supermarket check-out)?  Princeton University astrophysicist J. Richard Gott has the answer -- a very simple one if you think about it:  “If the lines have various lengths most people are going to find themselves in the longer of the lines.  If there’s any variation in the length of the lines, you’re likely to end up in one of the longer ones simply because there are more people in those lines.”

Gott applies the same notion to predicting the duration of things (how long a Broadway show will run, how long a relationship will last, how old is the universe).   Timothy Ferris profiles Gott and his approach to prediction in the July 12, 1999 issue of  The New Yorker.  Ferris's article is not online, but the first link below will take you to a site that explains Gott's ideas and the second one allows you to plug in a number and get a prediction using his method.
Links:

"A Grim Reckoning," The New Scientist, 15 November 1997 -- explaining Gott's ideas on duration in more detail

An "Interactive Duration Calendar" for estimating how much longer something will last simply by knowing how old it is now

A critique of the ideas in Gott's "A Grim Reckoning" by Alan Dix of Staffordshire University, UK

Profile of Gott in connection with his receiving the 1998 Astronomical League Award

Moving Forward Into the Past (Gott's ideas on time travel in The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News, April 2, 1998)

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