🌎 How the Book Changed Me

• This book has made me appreciate just how damn lucky we are to be here. And by we, I mean all of life. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be extremely difficult. As humans, we are extra lucky because we not only get to experience life, but we are the singular species with the ability to appreciate life and make it even better.

✍️ My Top Quotes

• As far as we can tell, humans are the best shot at discovering other life in the cosmos, monitoring where it's going, and keeping a record of where it's been.

• Every atom you possess in your body has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.

• We live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don't truly trust.

• Wherever we go on Earth- even into the most hostile possible environments for life-as long as there is liquid water and some source of chemical energy we find life.

📖 Summary & Notes

• Pluto is very tiny, it's just 0.25% as massive as Earth.

• Supernovae occur when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time brighter than all the stars in the galaxy.

• There isn't nearly enough visible mass in the universe to hold the galaxies together and there must be some other gravitational influence-what we call now dark matter.

• Newton states that the centrifugal force of the Earth's spin should result in a slight flattening at the poles and a bulging at the equator, which would make the planet slightly oblate. Geological time is divided first into four great chunks known as eras: Precambrian, Paleozoic (old life), Mesozoic (middle life), and Cenozoic (present life)

• The horizontal rows on the periodic table arrange the chemical in ascending order by the number of protons in their nuclei-what is known as their atomic number.

• Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, Helium is the second most abundant.

• A molecule is simply two or more atoms working together in a more or less stable arrangement. Two atoms of hydrogen to one oxygen form a molecule of water.

• Every atom you possess in your body has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.

• The number of neutrons is generally about the same as the number of protons, but they can vary up and down. Add a neutron or two and you get an isotope.

• Atoms never actually touch, their negatively charged fields repel each other...if these charges didn't exist, atoms could pass right through one another and entire galaxies could pass through each other unscathed.

• A quantum leap is when an electron moving between orbits disappears from one and reappears instantaneously in another without visiting the space between.

• Ozone is a form of oxygen in which each molecule contains 3 oxygen atoms instead of 2. Ozone at the ground level is a pollutant, however, way up in the stratosphere, it is beneficial since it soaks up dangerous ultraviolet radiation.

• The age of Earth was determined by measuring minute quantities of uranium and lead locked up in ancient crystals and meteorites as they are essentially leftover building materials from the early days of the solar system.

• Lead cannot be measured in the urine because it isn't a waste product. Instead, it builds up in the bones and blood which makes it so dangerous.

• The best guess for the age of the universe is a range of 12-13.5 billion years.

• Asteroids are rocky objects orbiting in loose formation in a belt between Mars and Jupiter.

• The most plausible explanation for dinosaur extinction is that Earth was struck by an asteroid or comet that took them out instantaneously in a single explosive event.

• Most paleontology is done in hot, dry places because if you're looking for bones, you really need exposed rock. It's not that there are more bones there, it's that you have a better chance of finding them.

• The last colossal volcanic hot spot erupted cataclysmically over 600,000 years ago. The hot spot is still there and is called Yellowstone National Park. There's a huge cauldron of magma under the western United States.

• The distance from the surface of the Earth to the center is 3,959 miles.

• The most common types of earthquakes are those where two plates meet, as in California along the San Andreas Fault. As the plates push against each other, pressure builds up until one gives way. In general, the longer the interval between quakes, the greater the pent-up pressure and thus the greater the scope for a really big quake.

• Tokyo stands on the boundary of three tectonic plates and is bound for a disastrous earthquake.

• There are 4 layers that compose Earth - a rocky outer crust, a mantle of hot, viscous rock, a liquid outer core, and a solid inner core.

• Earth's magnetic field changes in power from time to time. During the dinosaurs, it was up to three times as strong as it is now. This reverses on average of 500,000 years.

• Yellowstone is a supervolcano. It sits on top of an enormous hot spot, a reservoir of molten rock that is at least 125 miles down in the Earth. This hot spot powers all of Yellowstone's geysers, hot springs, and popping mud puddles.

• The crust at Yellowstone is thin and the world beneath it is hot.

• Earth is in the perfect location. We are the right distance away from the right star. One that is big enough to radiate lots of heat, but not so big as to burn itself out swiftly.

• Earth wouldn't be habitable if it were just 1 percent farther from or 5 percent closer to the Sun.

• We have the right kind of planet with plenty of contours. If the Earth were perfectly smooth, it would be covered everywhere with water up to 4 kilometers deep.

• Earth is a twin planet. We have the moon's steady gravitational influence to keep us spinning at the right speed and angle to provide the sort of stability necessary for the long and successful development of life.

• Zinc is the chemical responsible for oxidizing alcohol.

• The atmosphere is divided into 4 unequal layers: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and ionosphere.

• 80% of the atmosphere's mass, virtually all the water, and thus all the weather is contained within the troposphere.

• Temperature is just a measure of the activity of molecules.

• Sunlight energizes atoms. It increases the rate at which they jiggle, and in their enlivened state they crash into one another, releasing heat.

• In clouds, lighter particles tend to become positively charged and move to the top of the cloud. The heavier particles tend to become negatively charged and linger at the bottom and have a powerful urge to rush to the positively charged Earth.

• A bolt of lightning travels at 270,000mph and can heat the air around it up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Low-pressure systems are created by rising air, which conveys water molecules into the sky, forming clouds and eventually rain. Warm air can hold more moisture than cool air, which is why tropical and summer storms tend to be the heaviest.

• Stratus clouds are the clouds that give us our overcast skies—they happen when moisture-bearing updrafts lack the oomph to break through a level of more stable air above, and instead spread out, like smoke hitting a ceiling.

• The heat from the Sun is unevenly distributed, and differences in air pressure arise on the planet. Air can't abide this, so it rushes to equalize things everywhere. Wind is simply the air's way of trying to balance everything.

• The Earth revolves at 1,041 mph at the equator and moves slower at the poles. Thus, the closer you get to the equator, the faster you must be moving.

• Clouds are divided into 10 basic types, of which the plumpest and most cushiony-looking was number nine, cumulonimbus. This is where the expression "to be on cloud 9" comes from.

• Clouds are not great reservoirs for water. Only about 0.035 percent of the Earth's freshwater is in them.

• About 60 percent of water molecules in rainfall are returned to the atmosphere within a day or two.

• The Atlantic is saltier than the Pacific, and that is a good thing too. The saltier water is denser and dense water sinks. Without its extra burden of salt, the Atlantic currents would proceed up to the Arctic, warming the North Pole and depriving Europe of all its kindly warmth.

• We depend totally on bacteria to pluck nitrogen from the air and convert it into useful nucleotides and amino acids for us.

• Darwin's theory only couldn't explain how species originated. His theory suggested a mechanism for getting stronger or better, but no indication of creating a new species.

• Nobody knows quite how destructive human beings are, but it is a fact that over the last fifty thousand years or so wherever we have gone, animals have tended to vanish, often astonishingly large numbers.