A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

  CHAPTER 16 LONELY PLANET

  "99.5 percent of the world's habitable space . . ." New York Times Book Review , "Where Leviathan Lives," April 20, 1997, p. 9.

  "water is about 1,300 times heavier than air . . ." Ashcroft, p. 51.

  "your veins would collapse . . ." New Scientist , "Into the Abyss," March 31, 2001.

  "the pressure is equivalent to being squashed . . ." New Yorker , "The Pictures," February 15, 2000, p. 47.

  "Because we are made largely of water ourselves . . ." Ashcroft, p. 68.

  "humans may be more like whales . . ." Ashcroft, p. 69.

  "all that is left in the suit . . ." Haldane, What is Life? p. 188.

  "the directors of a new tunnel under the Thames . . ." Ashcroft, p. 59.

  "he had discovered himself disrobing . . ." Norton, Stars Beneath the Sea , p. 111.

  "Haldane's gift to diving . . ." Haldane, What Is Life? p. 202.

  "his blood saturation level had reached 56 percent . . ." Norton, p. 105.

  "But is it oxyhaemoglobin . . ." Quoted in Norton, p. 121.

  "the cleverest man I ever knew." Gould, The Lying Stones of Marrakech , p. 305.

  "a very enjoyable experience . . ." Norton, p. 124.

  "seizure, bleeding or vomiting." Norton, p. 133.

  "Perforated eardrums were quite common . . ." Haldane, What is Life? p. 192.

  "left Haldane without feeling . . ." Haldane, What Is Life ? p. 202.

  "It also produced wild mood swings." Ashcroft, p. 78.

  "the tester was usually as intoxicated . . ." Haldane, What Is Life ? p. 197.

  "The cause of the inebriation . . ." Ashcroft, p. 79.

  "half the calories you burn . . ." Attenborough, The Living Planet , p. 39.

  "the portions of Earth . . ." Smith, p. 40.

  "Had our sun been ten times as massive . . ." Ferris, The Whole Shebang , p. 81.

  "The Sun's warmth reaches it . . ." Grinspoon, p. 9.

  "Venus was only slightly warmer than Earth . . ." National Geographic , "The Planets," January 1985, p. 40.

  "the atmospheric pressure at the surface . . ." McSween, Stardust to Planets , p. 200.

  "The Moon is slipping from our grasp . . ." Ward and Browniee, Rare Earth , p. 33.

  "The most elusive element of all . . ." Atkins, The Periodic Kingdom , p. 28.

  "discarded the state silver dinner service . . ." Bodanis, The Secret House , p. 13.

  "a very modest 0.048 percent . . ." Krebs, p. 148.

  "If it wasn't for carbon . . ." Davies, p. 126.

  "Of every 200 atoms in your body . . ." Snyder, The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things , p. 24.

  "The degree to which organisms require . . ." Parker, Inscrutable Earth , p. 100.

  "Drop a small lump of pure sodium . . ." Snyder, p. 42.

  "The Romans also flavored their wine with lead . . ." Parker, p. 103.

  "The physicist Richard Feynman . . ." Feynman, p. xix.

  CHAPTER 17 INTO THE TROPOSPHERE

  "Earth would be a lifeless ball of ice." Stevens, p. 7.

  "and was discovered in 1902 by a Frenchman in a balloon . . ." Stevens, p. 56; and Nature , "1902 and All That," January 3, 2002, p. 15.

  "from the same Greek root as menopause ." Smith, p. 52.

  "severe cerebral and pulmonary edemas . . ." Ashcroft, p. 7.

  "The temperature six miles up . . ." Smith, p. 25.

  "about three-millionths of an inch . . ." Allen, Atmosphere , p. 58.

  "it could well bounce back into space . . ." Allen, p. 57.

  "Howard Somervell 'found himself choking to death' . . ." Dickinson, The Other Side of Everest , p. 86.

  "The absolute limit of human tolerance . . ." Ashcroft, p. 8.

  "even the most well-adapted women . . ." Attenborough, The Living Planet , p. 18.

  "nearly half a ton has been quietly piled upon us . . ." Quoted by Hamilton-Paterson, p. 177.

  "a typical weather front . . ." Smith, p. 50.

  "equivalent to four days' use of electricity . . ." Junger, The Perfect Storm , p. 128.

  "At any one moment 1,800 thunderstorms . . ." Stevens, p. 55.

  "Much of our knowledge . . ." Biddle, p. 161.

  "a wind blowing at two hundred miles an hour . . ." Bodanis, E = mc 2 , p. 68.

  "as much energy 'as a medium-size nation.' " Ball, p. 51.

  "The impulse of the atmosphere to seek equilibrium . . ." Science, "The Ascent of Atmospheric Sciences," October 13, 2000, p. 300.

  "Coriolis's other distinction . . ." Trefil, The Unexpected Vista , p. 24.

  "gives weather systems their curl . . ." Drury, p. 25.

  "Celsius made boiling point zero . . ." Trefil, The Unexpected Vista , p. 107.

  "Howard is chiefly remembered . . ." Dictionary of National Biography , vol. 10, pp. 51-52.

  "Howard's system has been much added to . . ." Trefil, Meditations at Sunset , p. 62.

  "the source of the expression 'to be on cloud nine.' " Hamblyn, p. 252.

  "A fluffy summer cumulus . . ." Trefil, Meditations at Sunset , p. 66.

  "Only about 0.035 percent of the Earth's fresh water . . ." Ball, p. 57.

  "the prognosis for a water molecule varies widely." Dennis, p. 8.

  "Even something as large as the Mediterranean . . ." Gribbin and Gribbin, Being Human , p. 123.

  "Such an event occurred . . ." New Scientist , "Vanished," August 7, 1999.

  "equivalent to the world's output of coal . . ." Trefil, Meditations at 10,000 Feet , p. 122.

  "a lag in the official, astronomical start of a season . . ." Stevens, p. 111.

  "how long it takes a drop of water . . ." National Geographic , "New Eyes on the Oceans," October 2000, p. 101.

  "about twenty thousand times as much carbon . . ." Stevens, p. 7.

  "the 'natural' level of carbon dioxide . . ." Science, "The Ascent of Atmospheric Sciences," October 13, 2000, p. 303.

  CHAPTER 18 THE BOUNDING MAIN

  "a world dominated by dihydrogen oxide . . ." Margulis and Sagan, p. 100.

  "A potato is 80 percent water . . ." Schopf, p. 107.

  "Almost nothing about it can be used . . ." Green, p. 29; and Gribbin, In the Beginning , p. 174.

  "By the time it is solid . . ." Trefil, Meditations at 10,000 Feet , p. 121.

  "an utterly bizarre property . . ." Gribbin, In the Beginning , p. 174.

  "like the ever-changing partners in a quadrille . . ." Kunzig, p. 8.

  "only 15 percent of them are actually touching." Dennis, The Bird in the Waterfall , p. 152.

  "Within days, the lips vanish . . ." Economist , May 13, 2000, p. 4.

  "A typical liter of seawater will contain . . ." Dennis, p. 248.

  "we sweat and cry seawater . . ." Margulis and Sagan, pp. 183-84.

  "There are 320 million cubic miles of water . . . " Green, p. 25.

  "By 3.8 billion years ago . . . " Ward and Brownlee, p. 36.

  "Altogether the Pacific holds just over half . . ." Dennis, p. 226.

  "we would better call our planet not Earth but Water." Ball, p. 21.

  "Of the 3 percent of Earth's water that is fresh . . ." Dennis, p. 6; and Scientific American , "On Thin Ice," December 2002, pp. 100-105.

  "Go to the South Pole and you will be standing . . . " Smith, p. 62.

  "enough to raise the oceans . . ." Schultz, Ice Age Lost , p. 75.

  "driven to distraction by the mind-numbing routine . . ." Weinberg, A Fish Caught in Time , p. 34.

  "But they sailed across almost seventy thousand nautical miles . . ." Hamilton-Paterson, The Great Deep , p. 178.

  "female assistants whose jobs were inventively described . . ." Norton, p. 57.

  "Soon afterward he teamed up with Barton . . ." Ballard, The Eternal Darkness , pp. 14-15.

  "The sphere had no maneuverability . . ." Weinberg, A Fish Caught in Time , p. 158, and Ballard, p. 17.

  "Whatever it was, nothing like it has been seen since . . ." Weinbe
rg, A Fish Caught in Time , p. 159.

  "In 1958, they did a deal with the U.S. Navy . . ." Broad, The Universe Below , p. 54.

  "We didn't learn a hell of a lot from it . . . " Quoted in Underwater magazine, "The Deepest Spot On Earth," Winter 1999.

  "the designers couldn't find anyone willing to build it." Broad, p. 56.

  "In 1994, thirty-four thousand ice hockey gloves . . . " National Geographic , "New Eyes on the Oceans," October 2000, p. 93.

  "perhaps a millionth or a billionth of the sea's darkness." Kunzig, p. 47.

  "tube worms over ten feet long . . ." Attenborough, The Living Planet , p. 30.

  "Before this it had been thought . . ." National Geographic , "Deep Sea Vents," October 2000, p. 123.

  "enough to bury every bit of land . . . " Dennis, p. 248.

  "it can take up to ten million years . . ." Vogel, p. 182.

  "our psychological remoteness from the ocean depths . . ." Engel, The Sea , p. 183.

  "When they failed to sink . . ." Kunzig, pp. 294-305.

  "Blue whales will sometimes break off a song . . . " Sagan, p. 225.

  "Consider the fabled giant squid." Good Weekend, "Armed and Dangerous," July 15, 2000, p. 35.

  "as many as thirty million species . . . " Time , "Call of the Sea," October 5, 1998, p. 60.

  "Even at a depth of three miles . . ." Kunzig, pp. 104-5.

  "Altogether less than a tenth of the ocean . . . " Economist survey, "The Sea," May 23, 1998, p. 4.

  "doesn't even make it into the top fifty . . ." Flannery, The Future Eaters , p. 104.

  "Many fishermen 'fin' sharks . . ." Audubon , May-June 1998, p. 54.

  "nets big enough to hold a dozen jumbo jets." Time , "The Fish Crisis," August 11, 1997, p. 66.

  "We're still in the Dark Ages." Economist , "Pollock Overboard," January 6, 1996, p. 22.

  "Perhaps as much as twenty-two million metric tons . . . " Economist survey, "The Sea," May 23, 1998, p. 12.

  "Large areas of the North Sea floor . . ." Outside , December 1997, p. 62.

  "By 1990 this had sunk to 22,000 metric tons . . ." Economist survey, "The Sea," May 23, 1998, p. 8.

  "Fishermen . . . had caught them all." Kurlansky, Cod , p. 186.

  "had not staged a comeback" Nature , "How Many More Fish in the Sea?" October 17, 2002, p. 662.

  "'fish' is 'whatever is left.' " Kurlansky, p. 138.

  "90 percent of lobsters are caught . . ." New York Times magazine, "A Tale of Two Fisheries," August 27, 2000, p. 40.

  "As many as fifteen million of them . . . " BBC Horizon transcript, "Antarctica: The Ice Melts," p. 16.

  CHAPTER 19 THE RISE OF LIFE

  "After a few days, the water in the flasks . . ." Earth , "Life's Crucible," February 1998, p. 34.

  "Repeating Miller's experiments . . . " Ball, p. 209.

  "as many as a million types of protein . . ." Discover , "The Power of Proteins," January 2002, p. 38.

  "the odds against all two hundred . . ." Crick, Life Itself , p. 51.

  "Hemoglobin is only 146 amino acids long . . ." Sulston and Ferry, The Common Thread , p. 14.

  "DNA is a whiz at replicating . . ." Margulis and Sagan, p. 63.

  "If everything needs everything else . . . " Davies, p. 71.

  "some kind of cumulative selection process . . ." Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker , p. 45.

  "Lots of molecules in nature get together . . ." Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker , p. 115.

  "an obligatory manifestation of matter . . ." Quoted in Nuland, How We Live , p. 121.

  "If you wished to create another living object . . ." Schopf, p. 107.

  "There is nothing special about the substances . . ." Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker , p. 112.

  "As one leading biology text puts it . . ." Wallace et al., Biology: The Science of Life , p. 428.

  "Well into the 1950s . . . " Margulis and Sagan, p. 71.

  "We can only infer from this rapidity . . ." New York Times , "Life on Mars? So What?" August 11, 1996.

  "was chemically destined to be." Gould, Eight Little Piggies , p. 328.

  "when tens of thousands of Australians . . ." Sydney Morning Herald , "Aerial Blast Rocks Towns," September 29, 1969; and "Farmer Finds 'Meteor Soot,' " September 30, 1969.

  "it was studded with amino acids . . ." Davies, pp. 209-10.

  "A few other carbonaceous chondrites . . ." Nature , "Life's Sweet Beginnings?" December 20-27, 2001, p. 857, and Earth , "Life's Crucible," February 1998, p. 37.

  "at the very fringe of scientific respectability . . ." Gribbin, In the Beginning , p. 78.

  "suggested that our noses evolved . . ." Gribbin and Cherfas, p. 190.

  "Wherever you go in the world . . ." Ridley, Genome , p. 21.

  "We can't be certain that what you are holding . . ." Victoria Bennett interview, Australia National University, Canberra, August 21, 2001.

  "full of noxious vapors . . ." Ferris, Seeing in the Dark , p. 200.

  "the most important single metabolic innovation . . ." Margulis and Sagan, p. 78.

  "Our white cells actually use oxygen . . ." Note provided by Dr. Laurence Smaje.

  "But about 3.5 billion years ago . . ." Wilson, The Diversity of Life , p. 186.

  "This is truly time traveling . . ." Fortey, Life , p. 66.

  "the slowest-evolving organisms on Earth . . ." Schopf, p. 212

  "Animals could not summon up the energy to work," Fortey, Life , p. 89.

  "nothing more than a sludge of simple microbes." Margulis and Sagan, p. 17.

  "you could pack a billion . . ." Brown, The Energy of Life , p. 101.

  "Such fossils have been found just once . . . " Ward and Brownlee, p. 10.

  "little more than 'bags of chemicals'. . ." Drury, p. 68.

  "to fill eighty books of five hundred pages." Sagan, p. 227.

  CHAPTER 20 SMALL WORLD

  "Louis Pasteur, the great French chemist . . ." Biddle, p. 16.

  "a herd of about one trillion bacteria . . ." Ashcroft, p. 248; and Sagan and Margulis, Garden of Microbial Delights , p. 4.

  "Your digestive system alone . . . " Biddle, p. 57.

  "no detectable function at all." National Geographic , "Bacteria," August 1993, p. 51.

  "about 100 quadrillion bacterial cells." Margulis and Sagan, p. 67.

  "We couldn't survive a day without them." New York Times , "From Birth, Our Body Houses a Microbe Zoo," October 15, 1996, p. C3.

  "Algae and other tiny organisms . . . " Sagan and Margulis, p. 11.

  " Clostridium perfringens, the disagreeable little organism . . ." Outside , July 1999, p. 88.

  "a single bacterium could theoretically produce more offspring . . . " Margulis and Sagan, p. 75.

  "a single bacterial cell can generate . . ." De Duve, A Guided Tour of the Living Cell , vol. 2, p. 320.

  "all bacteria swim in a single gene pool." Margulis and Sagan, p. 16.

  "microbes known as Thiobacillus concretivorans . . ." Davies, p. 145.

  "Some bacteria break down chemical materials . . . " National Geographic , "Bacteria," August 1993, p. 39.

  "like the scuttling limbs of an undead creature . . ." Economist , "Human Genome Survey," July 1, 2000, p. 9.

  "Perhaps the most extraordinary survival . . . " Davies, p. 146.

  "their tireless nibblings created the Earth's crust." New York Times , "Bugs Shape Landscape, Make Gold," October 15, 1996, p. C1.

  "it would cover the planet . . . " Discover , "To Hell and Back," July 1999, p. 82.

  "The liveliest of them may divide . . ." Scientific American , "Microbes Deep Inside the Earth," October 1996, p. 71.

  "The key to long life . . . " Economist , "Earth's Hidden Life," December 21, 1996, p. 112.

  "Other microorganisms have leapt back to life . . . " Nature , "A Case of Bacterial Immortality?" October 19, 2000, p. 844.

  "claimed to have revived bacteria frozen in Siberian permafrost . . . " Economist , "Earth's Hidden Life," December 21, 1996, p.
111.

  "But the record claim for durability . . ." New Scientist , "Sleeping Beauty," October 21, 2000, p. 12.

  "The more doubtful scientists suggested . . ." BBC News online, "Row over Ancient Bacteria," June 7, 2001.

  "Bacteria were usually lumped in with plants . . ." Sagan and Margulis, p. 22.

  "In 1969, in an attempt to bring some order . . ." Sagan and Margulis, p. 23.

  "By one calculation it contained . . ." Sagan and Margulis, p. 24.

  "only about 500 species of bacteria were known . . ." New York Times , "Microbial Life's Steadfast Champion," October 15, 1996, p. C3.

  "Only about 1 percent will grow in culture." Science , "Microbiologists Explore Life's Rich, Hidden Kingdoms," March 21, 1997, p. 1740.

  "like learning about animals from visiting zoos." New York Times , "Microbial Life's Steadfast Champion," October 15, 1996, p. C7.

  "Woese . . . 'felt bitterly disappointed.' " Ashcroft, pp. 274-75.

  "Biology, like physics before it . . . " Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , "Default Taxonomy; Ernst Mayr's View of the Microbial World," September 15, 1998.

  "Woese was not trained as a biologist . . ." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , "Two Empires or Three?" August 18, 1998.

  "Of the twenty-three main divisions of life . . ." Schopf, p. 106.

  "microbes would account for at least 80 percent . . ." New York Times , "Microbial Life's Steadfast Champion," October 15, 1996, p. C7.

  "the most rampantly infectious organism on Earth . . ." Nature , "Wolbachia: A Tale of Sex and Survival," May 11, 2001, p. 109.

  "only about one microbe in a thousand . . ." National Geographic , "Bacteria," August 1993, p. 39.

  "microbes are still the number three killer . . ." Outside , July 1999, p. 88.

  "once caused terrifying epidemics and then disappeared . . . " Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel , p. 208.

  "a disease called necrotizing fasciitis . . ." Gawande, Complications , p. 234.

  "The time has come to close the book . . ." New Yorker , "No Profit, No Cure," November 5, 2001, p. 46.

  "some 90 percent of those strains . . . " Economist , "Disease Fights Back," May 20, 1995, p. 15.

  "in 1997 a hospital in Tokyo reported the appearance . . ." Boston Globe , "Microbe Is Feared to Be Winning Battle Against Antibiotics," May 30, 1997, p. A7.

  "America's National Institutes of Health . . ." Economist , "Bugged by Disease," March 21, 1998, p. 93.