Math Blog 2011

Bill Bryson Reading QQC

This quote strikes me because I find it amazing that our huge universe, a universe that is bigger than we can reach the ends of, all appeared in fractions of a second. I find that this redefines the human persepective of time compared to the speed things move in space and molecular happenings. While we measure everything in seconds, hours, feet and miles, space moves in the smallest of seconds or slower than many of our lifetimes. It expands beyond what we can measure in millions of feet and miles. Earlier in the text Bryson mentions that some scientists spend their entire careers perfecting the amount of time it is believed that our universe appeared in (number mentioned in paragraph above). I wonder how long it took scientists to reach this number, and how they can measure how long it took our universe to fully form? I assume that they must examine the particles of earth and the molecules left from the "Big Bang". Unlike archaelogical finds, that are physical objects that can be used to trace and understand human history, to study the history of space you cannot just dig up an artifact and lock it away. Without physical objects to study and run tests on to determine the history of our universe's formation, I find it unbelievable that scientists can determine such numbers. In this section of text, Bryson claims that "Without it, (inflation theory) there would be no clumps of matter and thus no stars, just drifting gas and everlasting darkness. I wish that he expanded upon this further because I don't understand what he means by "ripples". By "ripples" does he mean that like ripples in water, the molecules and particles moving in space pushed other things to move when they hit eachother?

posted by Claire Anne @ 10:09 AM