Incredible Things I Learned From Cosmos

My copy w/ post-its (Thanks Tory for the post-its!)

I reviewed Cosmos by Carl Sagan on Wednesday, but there were so many fascinating facts in the book that I wanted to share them in another post - especially since I went through the trouble of post-it noting all the really mind-blowing parts of the book for me.  It's not enough that I'm learning, but I also have to info-dump on everyone around me. :)  So here's a selection of quotes from the book with my brief commentary in italics:

• "The rabbit was not domesticated until early medieval times (it was bred by French monks in the belief that newborn bunnies were fish and therefore exempt from the prohibitions against eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar.)"   p17

Haha, WHAT?  It shouldn't surprise me though how we set up these rules for ourselves and then try to find every way to circumvent them.  But really, fish??

• "Have you heard gold is made in supernova explosions? " p35

Nope!  Although gold is just any other metal I suppose, it's just that we place such importance on it that I find this extra cool!

• "Harold Morowitz has calculated what it would cost to put together the correct molecular constituents that make up a human being by buying the molecules from chemical supply houses. The answer turns out to be about ten million dollars” p106

Perhaps not incredible, but interesting that a price can be placed on a human being.  But I think this price reflects the chemical supply market from the 80s, so I assume we are worth much more now!

• "[Hera] married Zeus, the chief of the Olympian gods. They honeymooned on Samos, the old stories tell us. The Greek religion explained that diffuse band of light in the night sky as the milk of Hera, squirted from her breast across the heavens, a legend that is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use – the Milky Way."  p139-140

Wow, all the Greek mythology I've read and I never heard of this!  There are few other instances in "Cosmos" where Carl Sagan links the words we use today to obscure Greek/Roman translations and I find all of that fascinating.

• "Space and time are interwoven. We cannot look out into space without looking back into time." p165

This is probably my favorite fact from this list - I did know that the light from the stars takes many light years to reach us, but the succinctness of this quote and the beauty in the idea of looking back into time really appeals to me!

• "The electrical impulses in modern computers do, however travel nearly at the speed of light." p168

I find this so fascinating because nothing travels faster than the speed of light, and it's interesting that we can make something that can come close.  (Now just to harness that somehow to make time travel possible - or maybe make it possible to send some thing into the past!)  

• [Atoms are mostly empty space so why do things feel solid?]  "The answer is the electron cloud. The outside of an atom in my elbow has a negative electrical charge. So does every atom in the table. But negative charges repel each other. My elbow does not slither through the table because atoms have electrons around their nuclei and because electrical forces are strong. Everyday life depends on the structure of the atom. Turn off the electrical charges and everything crumbles to an invisible fine dust."  p180

This is just something I've never really thought about - I know atoms are mostly space but not quite why things feel solid if that is so - and of course Carl Sagan clears it up.  It's still very hard to conceptualize though.

• "Fire is not made of chemical elements at all. It is a radiating plasma in which the high temperature has stripped some of the electrons from their nuclei."  p183

After detailing the molecular components of what was believed in the past to be the most basic materials (earth, air, water, fire), I was surprised to learn that fire has no chemical elements! (Like hydrogen or oxygen or something)

• "[Whales] are the largest animals ever to evolve on the planet Earth, larger by far than the dinosaurs." p224

Okay, I feel like this might be something people already know - but I was shocked!  I've seen the skeletons of dinosaurs and whales are bigger than that?  Incredible!

I hope this post had some surprising information for my blog readers!  My last quote to share comes from a part of the book where Carl Sagan talks about books and I thought this quote was especially heart-warming for the book lover:

• "Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic."  p232