Status Updates From The Universe Within: Discov...

I'm amending my original update, I am now deep into fascinating and spectacular knowledge about existence.

Sad that the author can write about amazing things without any sense of awe or excitement.

Breathtaking!

"The Tibetan Plateau...contains over 82% of the rock surface area of the planet.... The rise of the Tibetan Plateau led to a shift from a warm Earth to a cold one, it did so by pulling carbon from the air via erosion of rock."

A 40 million year old Redwood forest... in the Arctic

In the whole section on Tharp's ridges, with Tharp's evidence that the seafloor was expanding being dismissed as "girl talk" until she had a "mountain of data" proving her point, then it was co-opted by her male supervisor ... and yet the word "sexism" never appears in the text. Good grief.

"For the fly, the gravitational pull of Earth on its body is negligible; the forces that are really important are the ones that bind molecules together. A fly can stick to a wall because these sticky, and tiny, molecular forces are proportionally more significant than gravity for a light animal. Imagine a hippo on that wall: gravitational pull would far exceed the pull of the molecules on its feet."

"tanning at the end of the day is more carcinogenic than doing so in the morning"

A French researcher spent 2 months in an underground cave with no time pieces. He somehow lost track of 23 days but his sleep/awake cycles lasted 24 hours. "Siffre's perception of time underground was completely off, but his bodily cycles marched along at an earthly pace."

"The city of Chicago is built upon an ancient coral reef."

So if Earth hadn't been hit by the future-moon and had its axis tilted, we wouldn't have seasons? Huh.

Venus lost its liquid water because it was too close to the sun and the water evaporated; Mars lost its water because it was too far from the sun; Earth was just right. It's like Goldilocks and the three planets.

"each glass of water we drink is derived from sources at least as old as the solar system itself"

"Our body dries out with each passing year; newborns are about 75% water, not much different from an average potato."