Seeing Further

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Seeing Further Page 40

by Bill Bryson


  The essential dilemmas of being human – the contrast between the stellar near-immortalities we see in our night sky, and our own all-too-soon, solitary extinctions – are now even more dramatically the stuff of everyday experience. We now know what a small sliver we inhabit in the long parade of our universe. Who can glimpse these perspectives and not reflect on our mortality? We are mayflies. Yet we now know enough of time and our place in it to reflect upon truly immense issues.

  Time is a fundamental, its nature slowly glimpsed. After all this time, we do not fully understand it.

  Here, on the level sand

  Between the sea and land,

  What shall I build or write

  Against the fall of night?

  – A.E. Housman

  EPILOGUE

  It’s sometimes wrongly imagined that cosmologists and evolutionists must be serenely unconcerned about next year, next week and tomorrow. I conclude with a ‘cosmic perspective’ which actually strengthens my own concerns about the here and now.

  The stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past are, through the work of Darwin and the geologists, now part of common culture. But most people still regard humans as necessarily the culmination of the evolutionary tree. That hardly seems credible to an astronomer. Our Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, but it’s got 6 billion more before the fuel runs out. It will then flare up, engulfing the inner planets and vaporising whatever remains on Earth. And the expanding universe will continue – perhaps for ever – destined to become ever colder, ever emptier. As Woody Allen said, ‘eternity is very long, especially towards the end’.

  Any creatures witnessing the Sun’s demise 6 billion years hence, here on Earth or far beyond, won’t be human – they’ll be as different from us as we are from bacteria. As Charles Darwin himself recognised, ‘not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity’. Post-human evolution – here on Earth and far beyond – could be as prolonged as the Darwinian evolution that’s led to us – and even more wonderful. Life from this planet could spread through the entire Galaxy, evolving into a teeming complexity beyond what we can conceive.

  However, even in this ‘concertinaed’ timeline – extending billions of years into the future, as well as into the past – the present century may be a defining moment. It’s the first in our planet’s history where one species – ours – has Earth’s future in its hands, and could not only jeopardise itself but foreclose life’s immense potential.

  Suppose some aliens had been watching our planet for its entire history, what would they have seen? Over nearly all that immense time, 4.5 billion years, Earth’s appearance would have altered very gradually. The continents drifted; the ice cover waxed and waned; successive species emerged, evolved and became extinct.

  But in just a tiny sliver of the Earth’s history – the last one millionth part, a few thousand years – the patterns of vegetation altered much faster than before. This signalled the start of agriculture. The pace of change accelerated as human populations rose.

  Then there were other changes, even more abrupt. Within fifty years, little more than one hundredth of a millionth of the Earth’s age, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to rise anomalously fast. The planet became an intense emitter of radio waves (the total output from all TV, cell-phone and radar transmissions). And something else unprecedented happened: small projectiles launched from the planet’s surface and escaped the biosphere completely. Some were propelled into orbits around the Earth; some journeyed to the Moon and planets.

  If they understood astrophysics, the aliens could confidently predict that the biosphere would face doom in a few billion years when the Sun flares up and dies. But could they have predicted this unprecedented ‘fever’ less than halfway through the Earth’s life?

  If they continued to keep watch, what might these hypothetical aliens witness in the next hundred years? Will a runaway spasm be followed by silence? Or will the planet itself stabilise? And will some of the objects launched from the Earth spawn new oases of life elsewhere?

  The outcome depends on us. Wise choices will require the idealistic and effective efforts of natural scientists, environmentalists, social scientists and humanists – aided by the insights that twenty-first-century science will surely bring.

  INDEX

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Note: Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

  A

  Acharius, Erik, 196

  action principles, 101

  Adams, George, 140, 153

  aerodynamics, 358

  Aeschnogomphus, 185

  $$ther, 65

  Agricola, Georgius, De Re Metallica, 303

  airflow, analysis of, 357–58

  alchemists, 39, 91, 124

  Alecto Historical Editions, 191

  algebra:

  abstract, 356

  Boolean, 349, 350–51 and Internet communications, 356

  linear, 356

  Ammann, Othmar, 246

  Ancient Monuments Protection Act (1882), 14

  Andromeda, 326, 327

  apocalypse:

  climate change and, 408, 417, 418–19

  in fiction, 406–12, 415–17

  human longing for, 412–15

  Hyde Park speakers on, 413

  impact events, 407

  nuclear, 408, 408

  personal survival in, 420–23

  Apollo space programme, 271

  Arbuthnot, John, 48

  archaeology, 5, 197

  Archaeopteryx, 186–88, 187, 191, 192, 201

  Argentinean ant, 282, 283

  Aristotelian worldview, 90, 111, 114, 119, 298

  Aristotle, 85, 469

  empiricism of, 114, 119, 121, 298

  and laws of syllogism, 115

  on motion, 110, 117, 127

  Posterior Analytics, 115

  on space and time, 64, 71

  view of the cosmos, 109

  “Ark, The,” Lambeth, 197

  Arlandes, Marquis d’, 159, 169

  art:

  geometric figuring, 71

  landscape, 392, 393, 400

  linear perspective in, 71

  medieval, 67, 68, 69

  Renaissance, 71

  Ashmole, Elias, 197

  Ashmolean Museum, 197–98

  Astbury, Bill, 256, 257, 258

  Asteroid 2008 TC3, 401–2

  astrobiology, 328

  astronomy, 469, 474, 478

  and Copernican principle, 323

  Earth seen via, 388–89, 401

  astrophysicists, 469

  Atacama Desert, 331

  Athill, Diana, Towards the End, 410, 415

  Atiyah, Michael, 482

  atomism, 91–92, 93, 123–24

  Aubert, Alexander, 172

  Aubrey, John, 5, 28

  Augustine, Saint, 463

  B

  Bacon, Francis, 111, 112, 299, 468

  death of, 120

  empiricism of, 113, 120, 121–22, 123, 128, 301,476

  followers of, 127, 317, 319

  Instauratio Magna, 299

  “knowledge is power,” 297, 314, 317

  The New Atlantis, 300, 309, 309

  Novum Organum, 299, 299

  on practical science, 296, 299–301, 302, 310,315

  Bacon, Roger, 70–71, 298

  Bak, Per, 381

  Bakelite, 310, 311

  Baker, Benjamin, 239

  Baldwin, Thomas, Aeropaedia, 170n

  ballooning, 158–65

  demagogic potential of, 160–61

  fashion accessories for, 160

  first crossing of English Channel, 176, 179

  first manned flight, 158–59, 163, 169

  first scientific record of, 175

  hot-air, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, 179

  hydrogen
, 158, 159, 160, 161, 169, 174, 179

  letters to and from Banks about, 166, 167,168–69

  and navigation, 172–76

  practical uses for, 170–72, 180

  Le Tableau de Paris, 161, 163

  Banks, Joseph, 13, 137, 148, 168

  and ballomania, 158–61, 163, 166–71, 172–76 178, 181

  Banks’ Florilegium, 191

  botanical collections of, 190–92, 195, 198

  on the Endeavour, 189–91

  and Heckingham lightning rods, 140, 150, 152

  Scientific Correspondence, 166

  Barbour, Julian, The Discovery of Dynamics, 99

  Barlow, Peter, 237

  Barnes, Julian, Nothing to be Frightened of, 416, 417

  Barrington, Daines, 193, 195

  Barthes, Roland, 310, 311, 312

  Baxter, Raymond, 264

  Bayes, Rev Thomas, 2–3, 9

  Bayesian inference on climate change, 433–34, 435

  letter regarding logarithms, 4, 5

  Bayes Theorem, 2–3

  Beaman, S. G. Hulme, 52

  Bell, Thomas, 221

  Bergmann, Torbern, 304

  Bernal, John Desmond, 253, 258–60, 258, 263, 268, 270, 271

  The Social Function of Science, 259

  on weapons of mass destruction, 259

  The World, the Flesh and the Devil, 259

  Berthollet, Claude, 161

  Bessemer, Henry, 303–4, 304, 306

  beta lactam ring, 262

  Bethe, Hans, 482, 483

  Bhagavad Gita, 462–63

  big bang, 326, 329, 338, 463, 470, 472

  biodiversity, 196, 274–79

  and accident, 277–78, 286, 293

  and community structure, 287–89, 290

  and extinction, 280, 283, 461, 480–81

  and food webs, 288

  inherited, 278

  and invasive species, 280, 282, 283

  invention of the term, 279

  on islands, 277–78, 289

  and loss of habitat, 283

  measurement of, 285–87

  necessity vs. chance in, 278–79

  and predation, 288–89

  and randomness, 289–93

  species concept of, 284–85

  threatened, 279–81, 283–84, 480–81

  bioengineering, 317

  biogenesis, 333, 335

  biology, synthetic, 319

  biosphere, endurance of, 391

  biotechnology, 154, 314–17

  Birch, Thomas, 30

  Black, Joseph, 160

  black holes, 455, 458–59, 460

  Blagden, Charles:

  and ballooning, 160–61, 167, 168, 171, 172

  and Heckingham lightning rods, 138, 148, 149, 150, 152

  Blake, William, 79

  Blanchard, Jean-Pierre, 159, 160, 172, 173, 174–76

  Blyth, Edward, 206, 208, 219

  Bobbitt, John, 138, 144, 148

  body and soul, dualism of, 65

  Boole, George, 344, 345, 349–51

  Boolean algebra, 349, 350–51

  Laws of Thought, 349, 350

  botanical gardens, 189, 191–92, 195, 198, 275

  Boulton, Matthew, 172

  Boyle, Robert, 10, 23, 24, 111, 112, 189, 300, 301, 468

  on chemistry, 123–24, 125, 128

  critics of, 119n

  experiments by, 21, 22, 29–30, 31

  and Newton, 33

  Boyle’s Law, 378

  Boylston, Zabdiel, 48

  Bragg, William Henry, 253–55, 254, 260

  Bragg, William Lawrence, 253–55, 254, 256–57, 258, 263, 264, 266, 268, 271

  Bragg’s Law, 254

  Brenner, Sydney, 267

  bridges, 230–49

  aesthetic appeal of, 246, 247–48, 248–49

  arch design, 231, 238

  cable-stayed, 248–49

  cantilever structure, 239, 239, 241

  collapses of, 238–39, 240, 241, 245, 245, 303

  designs of today, 245–49

  hybrid cantilever-suspension, 241–42, 244

  moving in the wind, 245

  “signature,” 249

  structural tests of, 233–35

  suspension, 231, 238, 241, 243–45, 248

  testing trends of behaviour, 234

  trusswork of, 241, 244

  tubular, 238

  Britannia Tubular Bridge, 232–35

  failure of, 237–38

  group portrait of engineers for, 235–36, 236, 237, 238, 249

  British Museum, 191

  British Museum Act (1753), 199

  Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, 246, 247

  Brook, Abraham, 139, 152, 153

  Brooklyn Bridge, 241, 246

  Brouncker, William, 2nd Viscount, 21, 22, 26

  Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, 237, 238, 319

  Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, 27

  Buckland, William, 196

  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, clock, 408

  Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 12

  C

  calculus, 352–53

  fluxional, 127

  origins of, 86, 89, 105, 348, 359

  Canada goose, 282, 283

  cancer treatments, 434

  Canton, John, 5

  carbon, 329, 395

  Carlin, George, 391

  Carnot, Sadi, 457

  Caro, Anthony, 247

  Caroline, Princess of Brandenburg-Ansbach, 86, 89

  causality, 129

  cause and effect, laws of, 363

  Cavallo, Tiberius, 177

  A Treatise on the History and Practice of Aerostation, 176, 178–80

  Cavendish, Henry, 136, 137, 145, 160, 172, 174–75

  celestial vs. terrestrial realm, 65–66, 69, 72, 80

  Celestine Prophecy, The (Redfield), 79

  cellular automata, 97–98

  celluloid, 310–11

  cellulose nitrate (gun cotton), 311

  CERN, 271, 318

  Cernan, Gene, 386

  chaos, 377–79, 381–83

  Chao Tang, 381

  Charles, Alexander, 158, 161, 169, 173

  Charles II, king of England, 3, 47, 301

  Chartres, Duke of, 167

  Chelsea Physic Garden, 198, 200, 201

  chemistry:

  Boyle on, 123–24, 125, 128

  experimentation in, 124

  chess, robotic intelligence in, 477–78

  Chester & Holyhead Railway, 231–32

  Churchill, Winston, 442

  Cicerone, Ralph, 431

  Civil Engineering, 247

  Clarke, Arthur C., 389

  Clarke, Samuel, Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, 86, 89–90, 93, 97

  Clausius, Rudolf, 457

  Clement IV, Pope, 70

  climate, vs. weather, 427

  climate change, 293

  and apocalypse, 408, 417, 418–19

  Bayesian inference on, 433–34, 435

  communicating to policy-makers, 430–31, 432, 435

  Intergovernmental Panel on, 428, 434, 435–36, 437–41

  modelling, 427–31, 429

  risk assessment in, 435–41, 442–43

  science of, 432

  uncertainty in, 408, 426–27, 428–29, 437, 439, 441–43, 479–80

  Climatic Research Unit, 134

  cloning, 479

  Coga, Arthur, 12

  cognitio, 92

  Cohn, Norman, 407

  collections:

  access to, 196, 198

  diffusion of knowledge via, 198

  funding of, 201

  living vs., inert, 198–99

  in museums, 187–92, 196–99, 201

  open to paying customers, 197

  ownership of, 197

  in public domain, 199

  science and, 181, 196, 201

  Collier, Hon. John, 206

  complexity:

  and chaos, 377–79

  organised, 379–81, 380, 382
<
br />   science of, 333

  compossibility, 101–2

  Compsognathus, 185

  Computational Fluid Dynamics, 358

  computers:

  in digital photography, 354

  as logic engines, 350, 351

  science in, 97, 475, 477–78

  Stepped Reckoner, 85

  conception, assisted, 317

  Condorcet, Marquis de, 166

  Conference of Engineers at Britannia Bridge (Lucas), 235–36, 236, 237, 238, 249

  continuity, 80

  Conway, John, 473

  Cook, Captain James, 6, 10, 135, 189

  Cooper, Samuel, 139, 152

  Copernican principle:

  applied to laws, 372–73

  in cosmology, 322–23, 324–31, 333–39

  Copernicus, Nicolaus, 62, 66, 111, 112

  followers of, 127

  rationalism of, 113, 115, 122

  and solar system, 116, 116, 322, 323

  Copley Medal, 141, 141

  coral reefs, 290

  Cornelio, Tommaso, 32, 34–35

  cosmological constant, 375

  cosmology, 62, 64, 66–67, 322–39

  Copernican principle in, 322–23, 324–31, 333–39

  cosmos vs., 76

  post-Newtonian space, 74–76

  theological consequences of, 72–73, 109

  and time, 462–63, 465, 474

  Cotterill, Rodney, 307

  Cowley, Abraham, The Advancement of Experimental Philosophy, 301

  Cox, Stephen, 14

  Creation, dating of, 452

  Creationism, 80

  Crick, Francis, 264–65, 472

  see also Watson/Crick

  Cromwell, Oliver, 301

  Croone, William, 26, 28

  crystallography, 258, 260–61, 270, 271

  Crystal Palace, 237

  Cumberland, George, 159

  cyberfiction, 80

  D

  Dale, Sir Henry, 257

  Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, 64, 65, 81

  Darwin, Charles, 134, 164, 207

  and biodiversity, 275–79, 280, 289, 293

  bridges crossed by, 219–22, 226

  and evolution, 204–6, 208–24, 265, 275, 331–32, 449, 451, 461, 484

  on missing link, 39

  The Origin of Species, 186, 208, 210–11, 213–14, 216, 217, 220, 221, 274, 275, 276, 277, 293

  as Royal Society member, 9

  specimens collected by, 201, 281

  and Wallace, 211–18, 221, 461

  Darwin, Erasmus, 142, 206

  and ballooning, 163, 166, 170, 171

  The Loves of the Plants, 163–65

  Zoonomia, 195

 

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