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A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
by Bill Bryson
There's perhaps a no more accessible or engrossing scientific read than Bill Bryson's 2003 opus. A Short History of Nearly Everything is not as impossibly far-reaching as the title might indicate, as every field of science that explains our universe and its inhabitants is expertly marshaled, peppered with a perfect level of detail and is logically ordered in a way that just makes sense. He fully engages science's tough and complex questions, seemingly rather preemptively, as after a concept is explained, he immediately proceeds with the most obvious question to follow. Everything from the Big Bang to man's (exceedingly terse) evolutionary past is represented here according to each field's most notable and eminent figures. It's clear Bryson carefully chose the most interesting and distinguished men and women of science to include here, and it's all laid out in adverb-heavy, eminently readable prose.
Bryson spends a great amount of time on natural disasters, providing excellent analogies to help readers understand both the scale and mechanics of them. Ice ages, earthquakes, supervolcanos, epidemics and pandemics are all given proper due. Given all the atrocities and chaos that has besieged our planet, outlined here in great statistical detail, it becomes axiomatically clear by the end of the book that humans - or any life for that matter - are incredibly lucky to even be here. In light of all that has gone wrong and can go wrong, it's remarkable there is any life to comment on the tragedy and disarray. I commend Bryson for demonstrating how truly diminutive our time here on Earth is relative to the universe's imponderably vast history.
He also emphasizes throughout how relatively little we know about Earth, the universe and ourselves, and what exactly we still don't understand. Contrary to what some scientists may have you believe, there's exponentially more we do not know than what we do know.
Although the book was published in 2003, there is little that is out of date given today's scientific knowledge. The confirmed interbreeding between Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons and Denisovans being one notable recent development. I feel a greater emphasis on climate change could have been given, but Bryson chose to skirt over it in the Ice Age section.
The content in this book is something I think everyone should know and be exposed to, and it's hard to imagine it being presented in better form than it is here.
Bryson spends a great amount of time on natural disasters, providing excellent analogies to help readers understand both the scale and mechanics of them. Ice ages, earthquakes, supervolcanos, epidemics and pandemics are all given proper due. Given all the atrocities and chaos that has besieged our planet, outlined here in great statistical detail, it becomes axiomatically clear by the end of the book that humans - or any life for that matter - are incredibly lucky to even be here. In light of all that has gone wrong and can go wrong, it's remarkable there is any life to comment on the tragedy and disarray. I commend Bryson for demonstrating how truly diminutive our time here on Earth is relative to the universe's imponderably vast history.
He also emphasizes throughout how relatively little we know about Earth, the universe and ourselves, and what exactly we still don't understand. Contrary to what some scientists may have you believe, there's exponentially more we do not know than what we do know.
Although the book was published in 2003, there is little that is out of date given today's scientific knowledge. The confirmed interbreeding between Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons and Denisovans being one notable recent development. I feel a greater emphasis on climate change could have been given, but Bryson chose to skirt over it in the Ice Age section.
The content in this book is something I think everyone should know and be exposed to, and it's hard to imagine it being presented in better form than it is here.
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Kenny
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Jul 01, 2012 09:44pm
PLEASE READ* Do you remember when he talked about stromatolites-the ancient rock structure dated from 3.5 billion years ago, made from cynobacteria-blue/green algae. He says the scientist agree that these were the first origins of life. My question is how do scientist know that the rock is the object that is 3.5 billion yrs old and not the organisms? Because the organisms could just have appeared when man first appeared.(Adam and Eve)
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Kenny wrote: "PLEASE READ* Do you remember when he talked about stromatolites-the ancient rock structure dated from 3.5 billion years ago, made from cynobacteria-blue/green algae. He says the scientist agree tha..."Kenny, thanks for the comment. Your question is a common one.
Remember that radiometric dating can be used to date a wide variety of fauna and strata. Isotopes that have been used for radiometric dating range in half-life values from 10 years (e.g., tritium) to over 100 billion years (e.g., Samarium-147). Thus if a particular sample contains the necessary isotopic mixtures, even the oldest of strata can be reliably dated.
You're aware that radiocarbon (or C-14) dating is used primarily for carbon-based materials, including organisms and strata. However, C-14, with a half-life of just 5,730 years, is only a reliable dating method up to 58-62,000 years.
If the organic fossil in question is too old for C-14 dating to be useful (i.e., all of the carbon molecules have decayed), the age of the fossil can be inferred using the principle/law of faunal succession, the observation that sedimentary rock strata contain fossilized flora and fauna, and that these fossils succeed each other vertically in a specific, reliable order.
Thus the age of the strata where the fossil was fossilized would be used to identify the age of the cyanobacteria fossils with an age of 3.5 billion years. I don't remember if he mentioned in the book which radiometric method was used, but it was likely uranium-238, which has a half-life of around 4.5 billion years.
Another common question is how do we know the fossil was fossilized there or that it was simply deposited there by some other means? The process of fossilization is a unique one, and practicing paleontologists know the tell-tale signs to determine which is the case.
You may have heard about the occasional finding fossils "out of place." This means a fossil is found in an unfamiliar rock layer accompanying much older or younger fossils. Occasionally fossils do show up in places where they were not fossilized, usually deposited there by a geologic event. For example, the fossil of a more recent species might be intermixed with much earlier or more recent species.
The good thing about radiocarbon dating is that even if fossils do show up in unfamiliar strata, we can determine the fossil's age and usually reconcile this with coinciding geologic events which deposited it there. Secondly, C-14 dating helps us determine with great precision when a species became extinct (or evolved into separate genera).
In short, there is a double feedback loop involved with dating the natural world. If the age of the fossil cannot be directly determined, it can be inferred from the rocks upon which it fossilized. Similarly, if we find fossils among much older or younger strata, we can use our knowledge of local geologic events to determine its true age.
Lastly, I'm not sure what you mean by asking if the 3.5 billion year old organisms could have appeared when man first appeared, or by inserting "Adam and Eve." Anatomically modern humans have been extant only around 150-250,000 years ago according to the general consensus. To be sure, the time gap between "man" and the cyanobacteria discussed in Bryson's book is immense. Secondly, the story of Adam and Eve relates to a creation myth found in the book of Genesis. I don't see how it is at all relevant.
Peace
Damn man you are intelligent! I'm still struggling from a creationist mind set.(That's why I mentioned Adam and Eve) I'm just getting introduced into the Abiogenesis/Evolution stages, and its overwhelmingly difficult. I'm sceptic about the dating processes. How do they know that radio-carbon dating is accurate and reliable? The method scientist use is to date the rock stromatolite is with the "SENSITIVE HIGH RESOLUTION ION MICRO PROBE" ,says Bill Bryson. "It measures the decay rate of uranium in tiny minerals called zircons.Zircons appear in most rocks apart from basalts and are extremely durable, survivng every natural process but subduction." The machine bombards a sample of rock with streams of charged atoms,[and] is able to detect subtle differences in the amounts of lead and uranium in zircon samples, by which means the age of rocks can be accurately addduced."
But is this reliable, how do they know that these aren'y just random numbers popping up on the screen?
Kenny,Radiometric dating is reliable because the decay rates of certain isotopes are constant. Most isotopic dating of rocks involve beta decay, such as uranium-238, which was likely used to date the rocks upon which the cyanobacteria was fossilized.
I think this illustration here presents it well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hal...
You are questioning, and that's good. I would find it abnormally suspicious if one were to accept anything with such explanatory power and scope without researching the foundation of what it is you are accepting. The Bible, creationism, evolution, radiometric dating - the epistemic resolve should be the same.
FWIW, I also grew up subscribing to creationism and holding negative associations with evolution and Darwinism. In a way I guess you could say I'm in the same position you are, just a few years ahead :)
