# A Short History of Nearly Everything **Covers**:: **Source**:: [[A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson]] **Creator**:: [[Bill Bryson]] # Highlights ### 1 HOW TO BUILD A UNIVERSE ##### ^283957200 highlight_tags:: [[proton]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=168 ###### ^283957200q A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on this i can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, rather more than the number of seconds contained in half a million years. ^283957200 ##### ^283957201 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=183 [[the Big Bang]] ###### ^283957201q In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory much too swift and expansive for any form of words, the singularity assumes heavenly dimensions, space beyond conception. ^283957201 ##### ^283957202 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=235 [[the Big Bang]] ###### ^283957202q the Big Bang represents some sort of transition phase, where the universe went from a form we can’t understand to one we almost can. ^283957202 ##### ^283957203 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=254 the [[Standard Model]] ###### ^283957203q According to Guth’s theory, at one ten-millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, gravity emerged. After another ludicrously brief interval it was joined by electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces—the ^283957203 ##### ^283957204 Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=289 [[expanding universe]] ###### ^283957204q The answer, disappointingly, is that you can never get to the edge of the universe. That’s not because it would take too long to get there—though of course it would—but because even if you traveled outward and outward in a straight line, indefinitely and pugnaciously, you would never arrive at an outer boundary. Instead, you would come back to where you began ^283957204 ##### ^283970930 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=451 ###### ^283970930q So that’s your solar system. And what else is out there, beyond the solar system? Well, nothing and a great deal, depending on how you look at it. ^283970930 ##### ^284394154 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=5703 Perhaps [[AI]] could be the answer to observing and cataloging this uncountable number of creatures? Likely though, the main problems lie in finding the species ###### ^284394154q So why do we know as little as we do? ^284394154 ##### ^284394155 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=5705 ###### ^284394155q Most living things are small and easily overlooked. ^284394155 ##### ^284394161 highlight_tags:: [[orange]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=5708 ###### ^284394161q Your pillow alone may be home to forty thousand of them. (To them your head is just one large oily bon-bon.) ... if your pillow is six years old—which is apparently about the average age for a pillow—it has been estimated that one-tenth of its weight will be made up of “sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung,” to quote the man who did the measuring, Dr. John Maunder of the British Medical Entomology Center. (But at least they are your mites. Think of what you snuggle up with each time you climb into a motel bed.)‡ ^284394161 ##### ^284394158 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=5726 ###### ^284394158q We don’t look in the right places. ^284394158 ##### ^284394159 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=5744 ###### ^284394159q There aren’t enough specialists. ^284394159 ##### ^284394160 highlight_tags:: [[pink]] Goto: https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FBFNII&location=5759 ###### ^284394160q The world is a really big place. ^284394160