nirE
08-11-2006, 05:35 PM
I am reading an amazing book. Simply put, it is a non-fiction science book. However, due to the fact the author is hilarious, and the fact it is about everything, it is a very, very good read.
It is entitled "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and is written by Bill Bryson, who is generally known for his travel books. The book's title gives you a basic idea of what it is about. Covering everything from rocks to molecules to life, it is absolutely astounding.
I thought I would share with you some of my favourite parts, whether they may be entire paragraphs or short little snippets. I am not finished, so there will not be that many, but I will update this with new ones as I find them.
Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don’t actually care about you-indeed; don’t even know that you are there. They don’t even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.)
A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is in itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on (a written) i can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them. So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least.
Now imagine if you can (and of course you can’t) shrinking one of those protons down to a billionth of its normal size into a space so small that it would make a proton look enormous. Now pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Excellent. You are ready to start a universe.
… Get ready for a really big bang. Naturally, you will wish to retire to a safe place to observe the spectacle. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to retire to because outside the singularity there is no where. When the universe begins to expand, it won’t be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. The only space that exists is the space it creates as it goes.
It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no ‘around’ around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be.
On land, if you rose to the top of a five-hundred-foot eminence-Cologne Cathedral or the Washington Monument, say-the change in pressure would be so slight as to be indiscernible. At the same depth underwater, however, your veins would collapse and your lungs would compress to the approximate dimensions of a coke can.
The most striking thing about our atmosphere is that there isn’t very much of it. It extends upward for about 120 miles, which might seem reasonably bounteous when viewed from ground level, but if you shrank the Earth to the size of a standard desktop globe it would only be about the thickness of a couple of coats of varnish.
Imagine trying to live in a world dominated by dihydrogen oxide, a compound that has no taste or smell and is so variable in its properties that it is generally benign but at other times swiftly lethal. Depending on its state, it can scald you or freeze you. In the presence of certain organic molecules it can form acids so nasty that they can strip the leaves from trees and eat the faces off statuary. In bulk, when agitated, it can strike with a fury that no human edifice could withstand. Even for those who have learned to live with it, it is often a murderous substance. We call it water.
All together, isn’t the world an absolutely amazing thing? I mean everything that.. Is is pretty damn astounding. The idea that the reason we exist is simply because a chain of reactions occurred, all at the right place in the right time, is amazing. Had one, slight change occurred in History, life as we know it would be non existent. Had the dinosaurs not all died out, we’d still be a few inches long, furry, and whiskered.
I love this kind of theoretical Science..
It is entitled "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and is written by Bill Bryson, who is generally known for his travel books. The book's title gives you a basic idea of what it is about. Covering everything from rocks to molecules to life, it is absolutely astounding.
I thought I would share with you some of my favourite parts, whether they may be entire paragraphs or short little snippets. I am not finished, so there will not be that many, but I will update this with new ones as I find them.
Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don’t actually care about you-indeed; don’t even know that you are there. They don’t even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.)
A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is in itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on (a written) i can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them. So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least.
Now imagine if you can (and of course you can’t) shrinking one of those protons down to a billionth of its normal size into a space so small that it would make a proton look enormous. Now pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Excellent. You are ready to start a universe.
… Get ready for a really big bang. Naturally, you will wish to retire to a safe place to observe the spectacle. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to retire to because outside the singularity there is no where. When the universe begins to expand, it won’t be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. The only space that exists is the space it creates as it goes.
It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no ‘around’ around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be.
On land, if you rose to the top of a five-hundred-foot eminence-Cologne Cathedral or the Washington Monument, say-the change in pressure would be so slight as to be indiscernible. At the same depth underwater, however, your veins would collapse and your lungs would compress to the approximate dimensions of a coke can.
The most striking thing about our atmosphere is that there isn’t very much of it. It extends upward for about 120 miles, which might seem reasonably bounteous when viewed from ground level, but if you shrank the Earth to the size of a standard desktop globe it would only be about the thickness of a couple of coats of varnish.
Imagine trying to live in a world dominated by dihydrogen oxide, a compound that has no taste or smell and is so variable in its properties that it is generally benign but at other times swiftly lethal. Depending on its state, it can scald you or freeze you. In the presence of certain organic molecules it can form acids so nasty that they can strip the leaves from trees and eat the faces off statuary. In bulk, when agitated, it can strike with a fury that no human edifice could withstand. Even for those who have learned to live with it, it is often a murderous substance. We call it water.
All together, isn’t the world an absolutely amazing thing? I mean everything that.. Is is pretty damn astounding. The idea that the reason we exist is simply because a chain of reactions occurred, all at the right place in the right time, is amazing. Had one, slight change occurred in History, life as we know it would be non existent. Had the dinosaurs not all died out, we’d still be a few inches long, furry, and whiskered.
I love this kind of theoretical Science..