Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Neil deGrasse Tyson “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry,”  W.W. Norton & Co, 2017, 208 pp.

In this new book, "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry," Neil deGrasse Tyson offers a pocket-sized primer of our understanding of the universe.  I additionally recommend watching his presentation on Netflix in 13-episodes called “Cosmos.”  Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and has very much taken over the TV presence that Carl Sagan used to present.

One of the more entertaining examples he uses to lower our feelings of self-importance is the bacteria in our bodies.  Before Trump dominated Twitter, deGrasse tweeted in 2012: "More bacteria live and work in one centimeter of your lower colon than the sum of all humans ever born."  "If you think you're at the top of evolutionary matter and you're in charge, just ask those bacteria.”  "Because they're thriving and as far as they're concerned, you're a dark anaerobic vessel of fecal matter for them. And if you get them upset you will know very quickly. So it's a way to say, 'No you're not really as in charge as you think you are.”

My Notes:

Pg. 17:  Fourteen billion years ago all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe was contained in a volume less than one-trillionth the size of the period that ends this sentence.  Conditions were so hot the basic forces of nature that collectively describe the universe were unified.  Then: …Bang.

Pg. 28:  For the first billion years after the big bang, the universe continued to expand and cool as matter gravitated into the massive concentrations we call galaxies.  Nearly a hundred billion galaxies formed, each containing hundreds of billions of stars.  After nine billion years and many exploding stars later, our sun was formed and four and a half billion years ago, the earth was formed.

Pg. 96:  Einstein predicted that when two black holes collide they will create gravitational waves that will be detectable.  We have detected just such waves generated by a collision of black holes in a galaxy 1.3 billion light-years away; at a time when Earth was teeming with simple, single-celled organisms.  While the gravitational ripple moved through space in all directions, Earth would, after another 800 million years, evolve complex life, including flowers and dinosaurs and flying creatures, as well as a branch of vertebrates’ called mammals.  Among the mammals, a sub-branch would evolve frontal lobes and complex thought to accompany them.  We call them primates.  A single branch of these primates would develop a genetic mutation that allowed speech, and that branch—Homo sapiens—would invent agriculture and civilization and philosophy and art and science, all in the last ten thousand years. 

Pg. 107:  Dark energy is responsible for 68 percent of all the mass-energy in the universe, dark matter comprises 27 percent, with regular matter comprising a mere 5 percent.

Pg. 113:  The universe is rapidly accelerating away from us.  As a consequence, anything not gravitationally bound to the neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy will recede at ever-increasing speed, as part of the accelerating expansion of the fabric of space-time.  Distant galaxies now visible in the night sky will ultimately disappear beyond and unreachable horizon, receding from us faster than the speed of light.  In a trillion or so years, anyone alive in our own galaxy may know nothing of other galaxies.  We will only be able to see and examine the Milky Way galaxy.

Pg. 115:  Only three of the naturally occurring elements were manufactured in the big bang.  The rest were forged in the high-temperature hearths and explosive remains of dying stars.

Pg. 118:  Every second of every day, 4.5 billion tons of fast-moving hydrogen nuclei are turned into energy as they slam together to make helium within the fifteen-million-degree core of the Sun.

Pg. 167:  Our moon most likely burst forth from Earth after a glancing collision with a wayward Mars-sized proto-planet.  The orbiting debris from this encounter coalesced to form our moon.

Pg. 192:  Latest estimates, suggest as many as forty billion Earth-like planets exist in the Milky Way alone.