Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand Quotes

“99.9 PER CENT OF THE PHOTONS IN THE UNIVERSE DO NOT COME FROM STARS OR GALAXIES BUT ARE THE LEFTOVER HEAT OF THE BIG BANG”
― Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe

“Incredibly, the human brain does all of its mega-computing on roughly 20 watts of power, which is the equivalent of a very dim light bulb. By comparison, a supercomputer capable of a similar rate of computation requires 200,000 watts – in other words, it is 10,000 times less energy-efficient than the human brain. Despite the human brain’s efficiency, however, it is extraordinarily energy hungry compared with all other tissues. While accounting for only 2 to 3 per cent of the mass of an adult, it consumes about 20 per cent of the body’s oxygen.”
― Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe

“However, it turns out there are more atoms in a single mouthful of air than there are mouthfuls of air in the earth’s atmosphere. It thus follows that every breath you take contains atoms breathed out by Marilyn Monroe. Or Julius Caesar. Or the last Tyrannosaurus rex ever to have walked the earth.”
― Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe

“PERHAPS THE GREATEST DISCOVERY IN THE HISTORY of science is that the universe has not existed for ever. It was born. There was a day without a yesterday.”
― Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe

“space-time is a billion billion billion times stiffer than steel. Imagine trying to vibrate a drum skin that is a billion billion billion times stiffer than steel! This is why only the most violent cosmic events, such as the merger of black holes, create significant vibrations of space-time.”
― Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe

“THE BLACK-HOLE MERGER DETECTED BY ITS GRAVITATIONAL WAVES ON 14 SEPTEMBER 2015 PUMPED OUT FIFTY TIMES MORE POWER THAN ALL THE STARS IN THE UNIVERSE COMBINED ‘If you ask me whether there are gravitational waves or not, I must answer that I do not know. But it is a highly interesting problem.’ Albert Einstein, 1936 ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we did it. We have detected gravitational waves.’ David Reitze, 11 February 2016”
― Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe

“The electromagnetic force is stronger than the force of gravity by an astonishing factor of 10,000 billion billion billion billion.”
― Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe

“Whereas neutrinos take just two seconds to travel from the centre of the sun to its surface, photons (light) take about 30,000 years.”
― Marcus Chown, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Fifty Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe