 I just finished reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I enjoyed the book, but It definitely wasn't short and it definitely didn't cover nearly everything.
The true subject of the book was the history of science and our understanding of the world from a scientific standpoint: the Big Bang, physics, chemistry, genetics, biology, and geology. I liked how the book set out a lot of difficult questions that the author pondered initially and which inspired his search for answers. My biggest takeaway was that there is still so much we don't know or understand about how our world works and how we got here today. That's both exciting and humbling. The book also confirmed which subjects I'm most excited about in science (physics and chemistry) and which I'm less excited about, simply by the level of attention and excitement I had for the various chapters. This is a great book if you want to see how the various scientific disciplines interact and want a high-level overview featuring all the big historical figures throughout science. Intro Atoms make u Extremely fortunate due to evolution and from ancestor survival Miracle of science Layers of earth and hotness inside it like sun How do scientists figure things out Part 1; lost in the cosmos 1 how to build a universe Proton Singularity Big Bang No past and no where Universe created in 3 minutes 13B years ago Cosmic background radiation left over from Big Bang Edge of universe Most ancient protons from edge of universe coming in as microwaves Inflationary theory Perhaps many past failed big bangs This was only one that could create us No edge of universe because bends Closed or open or flat universe theories 2 welcome to the solar system Pluto moon finding based on where instruments pointed Likely to have another thinking civilization 3 reverend Evans universe Finding dying stars from past Supernovae dying stars created heavier elements for solidifying universe Our moon came from mars part hitting us Part 2 the size of the earth 4 the measure of things Triangulation to measure distance to moon Haley Wren Newton Alchemy Principia Laws of motion Nonspherical earth Norwood navigation of seas and trig and earth circumference Venus transit Cavendish Measuring earth mass 5 the stone breakers Geology Layers of erosion and fossils Heat from earth creating mountains Fieldwork stone breaking Lile Earth aging difficult Kelvin young genius Thermodynamic laws 6 science read in tooth and thorn Dinosaur fossil found in 19th century Mastedon Theory of extinctions anti religious Strata 7 elemental matters Chemistry vs alchemy Brownian motion Mendeleev Periodic table immense organizer Curie radiation Aging by half life Rutherford Radioactivity first considered healthy and put into consumer goods Part 3 a new age dawns Eight Einstein's universe Gibbs Planck Ether Einstein Thought experiments Hubble on astronomy and universe expansion and age calculation by galaxy red shift/fly away rate Standard candles: stars used to measure universe distances through red shift rates Universe expanding and had a beginning 9 the mighty atom We are all short-lived atomic reincarnations Dalton All science is either physics or stamp collecting Brains not wired to visualize universe or atomic scale and electron clouds Cannot measure current state of universe precisely Action at a distance with entangled particles 10 getting the lead out Lead products and gasoline Radiocarbon dating Earth 4B years old based on meteorite rock dating Work against leaded gasoline 11 master marks clouds Particle detectors Atom smashers Quarks Universe age 13B years 12 the earth moves Continents in motion Pangea Same Animals on different continents Land bridges Continental drift theory Subduction of ocean sediment Plate tectonics Part 4 dangerous planet 13 bang Meteor impacts Hundreds of millions of earth crossing potential asteroids Very few ppl tracking them Dinosaur extinction Impact now would take us by surprise 14 the fire below Volcanic eruptions Know more about composition of sun than earth Richter scale Tokyo on 3 meeting tectonic plates City waiting to die Know little about inside of earth and failed to go deep into it 15 dangerous beauty Yellowstone supervolcano Due for eruption Largest active one in world Part 5 life itself 16 lonely planet Free diving Nitrogen narcosis Humans adaptable Moon necessary for earth spin stability and fading away Earth in perfect location Perfect elements and magma to sustain life 17 into the troposphere Wind extremely energetic Coreolis effect Fahrenheit made first accurate thermometer Cloud classification 18 bounding name Water so important and ubiquitous Oceanography taught lessons about life 30M species in ocean Extinctions by over fishing Know very little about earths biggest system 19 beginning of life Proteins miracles Ordered assembly Requires DNA who can only replicate The big birth of first life form 20 small world Bacteria on us everywhere We require them to survive Evolve more rapidly than us and share info Single super organism Bacteria under earth Bacteria can be revived after 250M years dormant Bacteria and host relationship Can't be too efficient at hurting host or spreading Some try to spread quickly like flu and some sit idle for years and then spring into action like HIV White cells protect and fight Swine flu killed as many as ww1 in 4 months 21 life goes on Very few fossils survive and few of those are found In favor of marine creatures 22 all that Life on earth goes extinct very quickly Life just wants to be Humans are tiny fraction of all time life has been around Extinction as way of life 23. The richness of being Search for best classification system Linnaeus Lots of disagreements Very inaccurate knowledge of how many living things on our planet 24 cells 25 Darwin singular idea Struggle and natural selection Mendel genes 26 the stuff of life DNA Purpose of life is to propagate DNA Most of DNA made for reproducing it not helping u Organisms slaves to genes Most of DNA does nothing Part 6 the road to us 27 ice time Not understood why or when have ice ages 28 biped Human fossils very few Evolution to us not predestined and random 29 restless ape Stone tools Humans have much less variability genetically than many animals because we all descended from one small area in Africa 30 good bye Humans caused dodo bird to be extinct Killed off many species Lost track of many others Bad at keeping track of things All living things lucky to be here
2 Comments
Hi thank you for the list of chapters and notes, I found it helpful.
Jacob
11/22/2016 02:29:34 pm
Thank you for this, I found it incredibly helpful as it wasn't too long. Concise yet still covers all the main points in such a largely wonderful piece of literature :) Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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