Thursday, June 16, 2011

Bill Bryson Reading #2 QQC

"... even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they're watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So they're not seeing you and me. They're watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs- people who don't know what an atom is , or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that's quite a trick.... Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us. So even if we are not really alone, in all practical terms we are."
After re-reading this section of the text a few times I still found myself confused with a lot of questions. Bryson thoroughly explained how big space really was which I understand, but I find it hard to grasp how this space could cause potential "intelligent beings" to view earth as it was hundred's of years ago. When Bryson says that " light that left Earth two hundred years ago" where did this light go? In the beginning of Chapter three Bryson says that many stars we see today burned out and we are just viewing the leftover light. This explanation would make sense if Earth was a star and "burned out", but it hasn't. Furthermore, for these potential "intelligent beings" to see us as full formed people with powdered wigs and horses, they would have to see full views of us- how can light portray us in our everyday form? When I think of light showing us in the image of humans moving around, my mind immediately jumps to the thought of slightly transparent holograms or projections, which would not look anything like "real life". If other beings could see those projections in space, is the light that is carrying those images that "left Earth" just floating through space in the forms of fully formed people, animals, and scenery? Aside from all my questions I find it really interesting that the space between galaxies causes them to be on totally separate moments in time. It seems if you applied the same logic to our view of the universe, whole galaxies could have burned out and we never would know. There could be a major shift in the solar system and we wouldn't find out for another hundred (or more) years!

RESPONSE TO ANOTHER PERSON'S POST (from last week)
Victoria Anderson: I thought Victoria's thoughts on the complexity and fragile state of gravity were really thought provoking. I like the fact that she pointed out how no one ever thinks about the strength of gravity, and how it has to be just right to keep our entire universe going. Like her, I was amazed that there is a 66% chance of gravity destroying the earth because it would become either to weak or too strong. Compared to the 33% chance of gravity being the perfect strength forever is very scary and daunting. Hopefully gravity will maintain a constant state of strength for awhile and save the universe from collapsing in upon itself.

posted by Claire Anne @ 11:42 PM 0 Comments

Thursday, June 9, 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 0 Comments