A Short History of Nearly EverythingOne of the world’s most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body takes his ultimate journey—into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail—well, most of it. In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining. |
From inside the book
Results 6-10 of 27
Page 30
... galaxy . " It's like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once , " says Evans . If a supernova explosion happened within five hundred light- years of us , we would be goners , according to Evans- " it would wreck the show , " as he ...
... galaxy . " It's like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once , " says Evans . If a supernova explosion happened within five hundred light- years of us , we would be goners , according to Evans- " it would wreck the show , " as he ...
Page 33
... galaxies together and that there must be some other gravitational influence - what we now call dark matter . One thing he failed to see was that if a neutron star shrank enough it would be- come so dense that even light couldn't escape ...
... galaxies together and that there must be some other gravitational influence - what we now call dark matter . One thing he failed to see was that if a neutron star shrank enough it would be- come so dense that even light couldn't escape ...
Page 34
... galaxies are evolving . It's one of those rare areas where the absence of evidence is evidence . " On a table beside the telescope were stacks of photos and papers rel- evant to his pursuits , and he showed me some of them now . If you ...
... galaxies are evolving . It's one of those rare areas where the absence of evidence is evidence . " On a table beside the telescope were stacks of photos and papers rel- evant to his pursuits , and he showed me some of them now . If you ...
Page 35
... galaxy known to astronomy as NGC1365 . ( NGC stands for New General Catalogue , where these things are recorded . Once it was a heavy book on someone's desk in Dublin ; today , needless to say , it's a database . ) For sixty million ...
... galaxy known to astronomy as NGC1365 . ( NGC stands for New General Catalogue , where these things are recorded . Once it was a heavy book on someone's desk in Dublin ; today , needless to say , it's a database . ) For sixty million ...
Page 36
... galaxy , Thorstensen said , is that it takes a particular kind of star to make a supernova in the first place . A candidate star must be ten to twenty times as massive as our own Sun and " we don't have anything of the requisite size ...
... galaxy , Thorstensen said , is that it takes a particular kind of star to make a supernova in the first place . A candidate star must be ten to twenty times as massive as our own Sun and " we don't have anything of the requisite size ...
Contents
1 | |
7 | |
19 | |
41 | |
6 | 79 |
PART III | 113 |
DANGEROUS PLANET | 187 |
LIFE ITSELF | 237 |
THE ROAD TO US | 417 |
NOTES | 479 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 517 |
9 | 529 |
41 | 536 |
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Common terms and phrases
acids actually Africa American ancient animals asteroid astronomer atmosphere atoms australopithecines bacteria bacterium became bones Burgess Shale called Cambrian carbon cells century chemical cloud crater creatures Darwin dinosaurs discovered discovery Earth Ediacaran event existence extinction fact feet Flannery Fortey fossil genes genetic Genome Geological geologist Gould Gribbin Haldane happened hominid Homo erectus Homo habilis hundred ice ages idea known least less living London look Manson crater microbes miles million years ago modern humans molecules Museum mystery named National Natural History Neandertals nearly never ocean Olorgesailie once organisms oxygen paleontologist particles percent perhaps physicist planet proteins Richard Fortey rocks Sagan Science scientific scientists space species specimens suggested surface survive T. H. Huxley Tattersall theory things thought thousand Tim Flannery tiny tion Trefil trilobites types University volcano Yellowstone York
Popular passages
Page 421 - Descended from the apes! My dear, we will hope it is not true. But if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.
Page 478 - Having shot down a number, some of which were only wounded, the whole flock swept repeatedly around their prostrate companions, and again settled on a low tree, within twenty yards of the spot where I stood. At each successive discharge, though showers of them fell, yet the affection of the survivors seemed rather to increase; for after a few circuits around the place, they again alighted near me, looking down on their slaughtered companions, with such manifest symptoms of sympathy and concern, as...
Page 75 - I have always thought that the great merit of the "Principles" was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind, and therefore that, when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes...
Page 51 - Isaac replied immediately that it would be an Ellipsis, the Doctor struck with joy & amazement asked him how he knew it, why saith he I have calculated it...
Page 386 - You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.
Page 67 - The world which we inhabit is composed of the materials, not of the earth which was the immediate predecessor of the present, but of the earth, which is ascending from the present, we consider as the third, and which had preceded the land that was above the surface of the sea, while our present land was yet beneath the water of the ocean.
Page 241 - The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.
Page 390 - I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my MS. sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters.