A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson [241]
11 “or one 10 million trillion trillion trillionth . . .” Alan Lightman, “First Birth,” in Shore, Mysteries of Life and the Universe, p. 13.
12 “He was thirty-two years old . . .” Overbye, p. 216.
13 “The lecture inspired Guth to take an interest . . .” Guth, p. 89.
14 “doubling in size every 10-34 seconds.” Overbye, p. 242.
15 “it changed the universe . . .” New Scientist, “The First Split Second,” March 31, 2001, pp. 27–30.
16 “perfectly arrayed for the creation of stars . . .” Scientific American, “The First Stars in the Universe,” December 2001, pp. 64–71; and New York Times, “Listen Closely: From Tiny Hum Came Big Bang,” April 30, 2001, p. 1.
17 “no one had counted the failed attempts.” Quoted by Guth, p. 14.
18 “He makes an analogy with a very large clothing store . . .” Discover, November 2000.
19 “with the slightest tweaking of the numbers . . .” Rees, Just Six Numbers, p. 147.
20 “gravity may turn out to be a little too strong . . .” Financial Times, “Riddle of the Flat Universe,” July 1–2, 2000; and Economist, “The World Is Flat After All,” May 20, 2000, p. 97.
21 “the galaxies are rushing apart.” Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, p. 34.
22 “Scientists just assume that we can't really be the center . . .” Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 47.
23 “the universe we know and can talk about . . .” Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 13.
24 “the number of light-years to the edge . . .” Rees, p. 147.
CHAPTER 2 WELCOME TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM
1 “From the tiniest throbs and wobbles . . .” New Yorker, “Among Planets,” December 9, 1996, p. 84.
2 “less than the energy of a single snowflake . . .” Sagan, Cosmos, p. 217.
3 “a young astronomer named James Christy . . .” U.S. Naval Observatory press release, “20th Anniversary of the Discovery of Pluto's Moon Charon,” June 22, 1998.
4 “Pluto was much smaller than anyone had supposed,” Atlantic Monthly, “When Is a Planet Not a Planet?” February 1998, pp. 22–34.
5 “In the words of the astronomer Clark Chapman . . .” Quoted on PBS Nova, “Doomsday Asteroid,” first aired April 29, 1997.
6 “it took seven years for anyone to spot the moon again . . .” U.S. Naval Observatory press release, “20th Anniversary of the Discovery of Pluto's Moon Charon,” June 22, 1998.
7 “. . . after a year's patient searching he somehow spotted Pluto . . .” Tombaugh paper, “The Struggles to Find the Ninth Planet,” from NASA website.
8 “there may be a Planet X out there . . .” Economist, “X Marks the Spot,” October 16, 1999, p. 83.
9 “The Kuiper belt was actually theorized . . .” Nature, “Almost Planet X,” May 24, 2001, p. 423.
10 “Only on February 11, 1999, did Pluto return . . .” Economist, “Pluto Out in the Cold,” February 6, 1999, p. 85.
11 “over six hundred additional Trans-Neptunian Objects . . .” Nature, “Seeing Double in the Kuiper Belt,” December 12, 2002, p. 618.
12 “about the same as a lump of charcoal . . .” Nature, “Almost Planet X,” May 24, 2001, p. 423.
13 “now flying away from us . . .” PBS NewsHour transcript, August 20, 2002.
14 “fills less than a trillionth of the available space.” Natural History, “Between the Planets,” October 2001, p. 20.
15 “The total now is ‘at least ninety . . .' ” New Scientist, “Many Moons,” March 17, 2001, p. 39; and Economist, “A Roadmap for Planet-Hunting,” April 8, 2000, p. 87.
16 “we won't reach the Oort cloud . . .” Sagan and Druyan, Comet, p. 198.
17 “probably result in the deaths of all the crew . . .” New Yorker, “Medicine on Mars,” February 14, 2000, p. 39.
18 “the comets drift in a stately manner . . .” Sagan and Druyan, p. 195.
19 “The most perfect vacuum ever created . . .” Ball, H2O, p. 15.
20 “ Our nearest neighbor in the cosmos,” Proxima Centauri . . .” Guth, p. 1; and Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 39.
21 “The average distance between stars . . .” Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, p. 251.
22 “If we were randomly inserted . . .” Sagan, p. 52.
CHAPTER 3 THE REVEREND EVANS'S UNIVERSE
1 “the energy of a hundred billion suns . . .”