Audio book
Non Fictional Genre but as fun as a non fiction can be!
Listening time-around 15 hours! But if you increase the speed to 1.2 the time taken is reduced so much without affecting the understanding! This is just my personal experience though! You can increase or not depending on your personal preference!
Rating 5/5; for the narration and for the amazing facts! For the quirky tales in between and for making it so riveting!
Nothing about universe is how he starts the big journey ahead! Bill knows it’s a long and arduous task indeed and even then he starts slow!
How the book starts just made me hooked so much that I was planning to finish this rather that Kabir Bedi’s juicy book! This was equally interesting!
See the words how it begins; “To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope] these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions o f deft cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.”
He talks about the how we are such a tiny speck in the universe! How even our own solar system shown in our school projects mislead us so much! The planet are just a small part of the huge system which is mostly empty space! He talks about Big Bang Theory, he talks about singularity and many such technical terms which he introduces and explains as simply as possible.
He then moves on to Pluto and it’s story on how it became a planet and how it’s an odd planet and still debate continues! How Americans wanted Pluto which is why it became the planet in the first place! Venetia Katharine Douglas Burney was a 11 year old girl who won close to 450 USD for knowing some Greek mythology! She suggested that the planet X or the ninth planet which was discovered in 1920s be named Pluto!
Finding the radiation noise is a very interesting piece of trivia which is very famous in the physics world! How a group of scientists worked so much to find the radiation noise only to have been accidentally discovered by those who did not even understand what they found! Reminds me of the episode of Big Bang Theory where a scientist duo will prove string theory and they did not even know what it was in the first place! In real life though the discoverers get the Noble!
Bill talks about the vastness of planet then sun then solar system then galaxy and finally the universe making us very small indeed!
In every scientist or great person he talks about the quirks and the little known trivia like about Isaac Newtons Alchemy connection or about Haley and his comet or about those several scientists which are a lot to name!
So many story lines though fact are reserved for those who work so hard without any reward or recognition of their work! In fact he gives so many examples in this and in one chapter concludes how we are not a society who praise talent or new discovery!
Then he speaks about the famous doctor Parkinson and his other contribution including being accused of assassination! Of course Bill shifts from one scientist to another is rapid succession either describing one who is brilliant but under appreciated or someone who does little but gulps all the credit! It is an unfair world indeed!
He talks about dinosaurs and their origin and the nomenclature! He talks about physics and chemistry and the rise as a field then he talks about Geology with more passion moving on to palaeontology in between giving us facts about History with so much spice thrown in that it sounds like gossip and so very interesting to say the least!
The most dull subjects in most books like Jared Diamond or even our rock star’s Yuval Noah (though Sapiens was equally interesting!) has been remixed by Bill to make it extremely palatable which is a great feat indeed!
He talks about how earth is a dangerous place describing the volcano and the dangerous quakes and describing them in detail akin to a thriller! He talks about the continents drift theory, about the age of the earth and about the evolution of man! All these are dealt with so many interesting stories that you would simply wish that it will never end! Alfred Wegener; does the name ring a bell? Well he proposed that Earth’s continents move very slowly. Over millions of years they can move a long way. Between 1912 and 1929 he published a stream of fossil and rock evidence to support his theory! This was the origin of the continental drift theory which is very well accepted today! But alas, Wegener was ridiculed and his theory was strongly rejected by everyone at that time! So the major intelligent minds of that era rejected the theory which is true! After reading this I say to myself what a remarkable story! Better than a Greek tragedy and true!
He talks about lead and the power of the oil corporates! Clair Cameron Patterson in an effort to guage the age of the Earth wanted to have a clean rock! Clean meant at that time LEAD free! Yes, lead is everywhere! In fact it is responsible for many diseases, memory loss and environmental damage! So his lab was one of the cleanest place!
He talks about different ancestors of earth and how humans may be just born in the last minute or so of the earth total life! How many many species are now extinct only because of the most dangerous animal in the world; the Homo sapiens!
He talks about Java man and about Lucy! So many facts and true trivia is thrown in every line and page that you will enjoy it to the zenith!
Of course many time he would state that we do not know much! He also gets into medicine and throws some light though the amateurishness comes out so I am guessing that others who are involved in their respective field may also feel that Bill has dumbed it down a little too much! But hey it works and how!
Richter magnitude scale and Richter’s magnitude scale – is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Francis Richter and Beno Gutenberg. Since it’s a log scale, an earthquake measuring 5.0 releases 31 times more energy than an earthquake measuring 4.0! But this is not an actual scale! In fact the original scale did not even catch magnitude of less than 4.5! So now a modern method of measuring is used but still it is reported as Richter scale since that’s more familiar! Even when there are changes no one can separate Richter from earthquakes because he earnestly made the effort!
One interesting story; Richard Owen came up with the name dinosaur in 1841 to describe the fossils of extinct reptiles. He coined the word by combining the Greek words “deinos”, which means terrible, and “sauros”, which means lizard! Now before you give respect to him you must also know that he had made no actual discovery himself! In fact the first dinosaur bone was discovered by another anatomist Mantell who met with an accident and got crippled. Owen then started reclaiming and renaming the fossils discovered by Mantell!
He says about two great contributors of evolutionary biology starting with Charles Darwin just when I thought I knew all his stories! But the way Bill tells some of his stories and how his famous book rather than being relegated in a corner was published! This section is a must read!
He then talks about Gregor Mendel who like most great discovery in the book was under appreciated when he was alive so that he left his work and was made an abbot!
Every other great person like Newton or Einstein are mentioned and summarised as soon as possible in between he also describes so many astronomers, scientists and geologists and explorers! It is a wild adventure indeed and you feel so bad when it ends!
Sir ISAAC NEWTON one of the most brilliant minds of the universe used to get up in the morning and wonder who he is and how did he get there! When they later analysed his hair they found so much mercury! An absent minded genius!
He tells how Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev is known as the founder of the periodic table! And how he gets it! Another interesting story line to hold your attention and how.
He talks about squid and how you have never seen them alive! About how little we know about whales and about how water has a special property which makes it perfect for us!
How everything is so perfect for earth to have life and how a small difference in distance would have made a huge impact!
Even if the summary is so long, believe me every page is a treasure house of information and will entertain you like no other!
He ends on a solemn note about the dodo bird and about how we take our position in the chain granted! It is a final call to humans to stop trying to destroy life and otherwise!
Just go for it!
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