A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson [251]
4 “The last supervolcano eruption on Earth . . .” McGuire, p. 104.
5 “for the next twenty thousand years . . .” McGuire, p. 107.
6 “you're standing on the largest active volcano in the world . . .” Paul Doss, interview with author, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, June 16, 2001.
7 “devastatingly evident on the night of August 17, 1959 . . .” Smith and Siegel, pp. 5–6.
8 “as little as a single molecule . . .” Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, p. 12.
9 “scientists were finding even hardier microbes . . .” Ashcroft, Life at the Extremes, p. 275.
10 “As NASA scientist Jay Bergstralh has put it . . .” PBS NewsHour transcript, August 20, 2002.
CHAPTER 16 LONELY PLANET
1 “99.5 percent of the world's habitable space . . .” New York Times Book Review, “Where Leviathan Lives,” April 20, 1997, p. 9.
2 “water is about 1,300 times heavier than air . . .” Ashcroft, p. 51.
3 “your veins would collapse . . .” New Scientist, “Into the Abyss,” March 31, 2001.
4 “the pressure is equivalent to being squashed . . .” New Yorker, “The Pictures,” February 15, 2000, p. 47.
5 “Because we are made largely of water ourselves . . .” Ashcroft, p. 68.
6 “humans may be more like whales . . .” Ashcroft, p. 69.
7 “all that is left in the suit . . .” Haldane, What is Life? p. 188.
8 “the directors of a new tunnel under the Thames . . .” Ashcroft, p. 59.
9 “he had discovered himself disrobing . . .” Norton, Stars Beneath the Sea, p. 111.
10 “Haldane's gift to diving . . .” Haldane, What Is Life? p. 202.
11 “his blood saturation level had reached 56 percent . . .” Norton, p. 105.
12 “But is it oxyhaemoglobin . . .” Quoted in Norton, p. 121.
13 “the cleverest man I ever knew.” Gould, The Lying Stones of Marrakech, p. 305.
14 “a very enjoyable experience . . .” Norton, p. 124.
15 “seizure, bleeding or vomiting.” Norton, p. 133.
16 “Perforated eardrums were quite common . . .” Haldane, What is Life? p. 192.
17 “left Haldane without feeling . . .” Haldane, What Is Life? p. 202.
18 “It also produced wild mood swings.” Ashcroft, p. 78.
19 “the tester was usually as intoxicated . . .” Haldane, What Is Life? p. 197.
20 “The cause of the inebriation . . .” Ashcroft, p. 79.
21 “half the calories you burn . . .” Attenborough, The Living Planet, p. 39.
22 “the portions of Earth . . .” Smith, p. 40.
23 “Had our sun been ten times as massive . . .” Ferris, The Whole Shebang, p. 81.
24 “The Sun's warmth reaches it . . .” Grinspoon, p. 9.
25 “Venus was only slightly warmer than Earth . . .” National Geographic, “The Planets,” January 1985, p. 40.
26 “the atmospheric pressure at the surface . . .” McSween, Stardust to Planets, p. 200.
27 “The Moon is slipping from our grasp . . .” Ward and Browniee, Rare Earth, p. 33.
28 “The most elusive element of all . . .” Atkins, The Periodic Kingdom, p. 28.
29 “discarded the state silver dinner service . . .” Bodanis, The Secret House, p. 13.
30 “a very modest 0.048 percent . . .” Krebs, p. 148.
31 “If it wasn't for carbon . . .” Davies, p. 126.
32 “Of every 200 atoms in your body . . .” Snyder, The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things, p. 24.
33 “The degree to which organisms require . . .” Parker, Inscrutable Earth, p. 100.
34 “Drop a small lump of pure sodium . . .” Snyder, p. 42.
35 “The Romans also flavored their wine with lead . . .” Parker, p. 103.
36 “The physicist Richard Feynman . . .” Feynman, p. xix.
CHAPTER 17 INTO THE TROPOSPHERE
1 “Earth would be a lifeless ball of ice.” Stevens, p. 7.
2 “and was discovered in 1902 by a Frenchman in a balloon . . .” Stevens, p. 56; and Nature, “1902 and All That,” January 3, 2002, p. 15.
3 “from the same Greek root as menopause .” Smith, p. 52.
4 “severe cerebral and pulmonary edemas . . .” Ashcroft, p. 7.
5 “The temperature six miles up . . .” Smith, p. 25.
6 “about three-millionths of an inch . . .” Allen, Atmosphere, p. 58.
7 “it could well bounce back into space . . .” Allen, p. 57.
8 “Howard Somervell ‘found himself choking to death' . . .” Dickinson, The Other Side of Everest,