Even though I actually understand very little of any of it, I get really geeked out when it comes to astronomy. And I'm always way behind on popular and current reading lists but I'm finally picking up this awesome book. (In the case you didn't notice, it's written by Bill Bryson.) In just 500 pages the book explores "how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us." I've only made it through 1. How to Build a Universe, 2. Welcome to the Solar System, 3. The Reverend Evan's Universe and 4. The Measure of Things, but man, my mind is blown. The Universe is wild but even our own little Earth is a statistical miracle- a perfect balance of a lot of wacky forces. And on top of that thought is the thought that just the Milky Way is so unimaginably enormous that there is probability of it having maybe another million advanced civilizations (Frank Drake's equation.) And even if that could be true, distances are so whopping that we will never ever know. (Dear Rocket Scientists, THE MOON'S NOT THAT FAR!) Yep, so far, in just 50 odd pages, I've learned that 1 percent of the static on your tv set is residue radiation from the big bang, that a comet has begun a long fall to Manson, Iowa (set to hit in four million years) and that Issac Newton, albeit out-of-control brilliant, was a freaking lunatic (there is pretty good evidence that he, like, flavored his oatmeal with mercury or something). Yep, I find this stuff fun. Stars are cool. Dark matter is weird. Space rules. It makes me feel, all at the same time, like nothing more than something stuck between the toes of a termite and a little bit of an anomaly.
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