The subject discussed in this article is based on the book The history
of almost everything by Bill Bryson. I have tried to make summary in best
possible way. Hope you love my effort.
Measurements……..
Newton was sort of wonderous character in the history of science. We are
all familiar with his laws of motion, gravity. Beyond that he invented the
calculus but never told a single person for almost 27 years. You know
scientists are extremely secretive and enourmously suspicious. He was even fund
of alchemy. Analysis of strand of his hair contained mercury- something largely
interesting in alchemy and making of thermometer.
Another name Henry Cavendish. He performed experiment with electrical
conductivity in gases. He extracted hydrogen gas and combined with oxygen
molecule to form water on lab. Another interesting name called Hennig Brand -
he experimented with urine to extract gold. He was particularly interested in
the subject because of striking similarity in color of gold and urine. Lavoiser
- Another incredible chemist who actually never found new elements but gave
formal names to oxygen, hydrogen. Initially during its discovery, laughing gas
was used in the theaters and comedy shows. Many scientists contributed for the
field of chemistry by determining atom diameter to be of 0.00000008 cm. Finding
the special number that 2.016 gm of hydrogen contains 6.022*10>23. which is
equivalent to cover united states with the depth of nine miles through popcorn
cornels. Berzelious gave latin symbols and their meaning. Becqueral made something very great, he was
the teacher who assigned his students about this thing to experiment. She
worked with that radiation so much that Marie Curie died of Lukemia. Even now
her cookbooks are too dangerous to handle and are protected by placing in the
lead lined box and those who wish to see her working must do some protective
clothing.
It was also the time in which there was race among scientists to find mass
of earth. And it was found to be of 5.97 billion trillion tons.
Geology……..
James Hutton was interested in reasoning why marine fossils found at the
top of mountains. He had reasoned about the plate tectonics before even it was
formally accepted 200 years later.
Lyell first published about principle of geology that went on to become
major bestseller at that time.
Fossil record was specially controversial. Geological time scale was not
also properly given. Great ordovician controversy was one of such dispute,
which was settled when ordovician was inserted between cambrian and silurian.
Lyell also introduced epoch to cover periods. Pleistocene- Most recent,
Pliocene- more recent, Miocene- Moderately recent, Oligocene- but alittle
recent,
People were so confused to give proper timing to a given species, because
there were not proper dating technology, they simply guessed.
To find age of earth….
Christian James Usher had concluded in his book that earth had been created
mid day on 23 october 4004 BC.
Edmond suggested that if you divided total salt in worlds seas by amount added
each yeaar, you would know number of years that oceans had been in existence
giving rough idea of earths age, but turned down by scientists as being
impractical.
Buffon tried to get idea about rate of heat radiation from earth to
calculate age of earth
Lord Kevin by using electromagnetism thermodynamics wave theory tried to
evaluate earths age, but again failed.
Dinosaurs…..
First dinosaurs bone ever found was also first to be lost. People were less
curious about bones.
Mastodon was named by George Cuvier, he presented by the idea of
catastrophe in earth at various period in earth that wiped out all the
creatures on earth.
Willium Smith tried first to correlate different rock strata.
Ichthyosaurus, Plesisaurus, Pterodactylus, are some varieties of Dinosaurs
discovered by Mary Anning.
Richard Owens was the one who coined the term Dinosauria.
Einstein….
For light we use symbol ‘c’, which on latin named as Celeretis, called as
swiftness.
Einstein was the brilliant mind of all, but he applied for university
lecturer but rejected, tried for high school teacher but rejected also.
Einstein was particularly so much influenced about gravity and tried to logic
what if light during its passage encountered with gravity?
Space and time are not absolute and relative to observer and to the thing
being observed and faster the one moves more pronounced effect
Hubble tried to measure spectra of distant galaxies and are moving apart
from us.
If stars had been burning indefinitely in static universe they would have
made it whole intolerably hot.
Martrin Rees say atoms live for ten to the power 35 years.
Atoms….
Rutherford gold foil experiment to discover nucleus.
Proton gives an atom its identity and electrons its personality.
Electron actually doesn’t exist untill.
Heisenberg when asked how one could envision atom, replied,’ Don’t Try’.
Scientists formed different laws, one for world of very small and one for
universe at large. Einstein disliked that he devoted his rest of lives to
search for a way to tie up these loose ends by finding grand unified theory and
always failed.
Diving into Chemistry now….
Lead is neurotoxin, getting too much of it damage brain, CNS, blindness,
insomnia, and many more. But lead had huge use in many resources and people
were using it recklessly without realizing the consequences. Industrialist used
lead as antiknocking even though it was dangerous. Ethyls ebullient inventor,
Thomas Midgley tried to silence reporter by pouring tetraethyl lead in hand and
holding it close to the nose for 60 seconds. Haha
Single kg of cfc can destroy 70,000 kgs of atmospheric ozone.
Initially lead were made to test in many patients and when their urine and
stool were checked no lead was found so it was concluded as safe but later it
was found that lead were accumulated in blood and bones making it dangerous.
Particle physics was another immerging incredible science. Here we have
almost 150 over particles with further 100 or so suspected.
Superstring theory, All those little things like quarks and leptons that we
had previously thought as particles are actually strings vibrating strands of
energy that oscillate in 11 dimensions.
Hubbles law, the further away the galaxies are, the faster it is flying
away. i.e H=v/d, v is recessional velocity and d is the distance away from us.
Until 2003 we weren’t sure about the age of earth, NASA in 2003 using
wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy probe announced with confidence the age of earth
to be 13.7 billion years old.
We live in universe, whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars
whose distances from us and each other we don’t altogether know filled with
matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose
properties we don’t truly understand.
Wegener was the first with the idea of continent displacement theory but
Holmes was the one to give continental drift theory.
Every year rivers carried massive volumes of eroded material 500 million
tons of calcium to seas. If multiplied rate of deposition by number of years,
it had been going there, than it should be about 20 kilometers of sediments on
ocean bottoms.
Harry Hess was the one to study about the building of new ocean floor in
the mid-Atlantic ridge. As per the research, it has been found that earth do
not have any ocean floor older than 175 Million Years old.
Bernard Brunches was the one to found the earth’s magnetic field reverses
from time to time.
We found out about that fact by analyzing the orientation of iron ores.
Young iron ores oriented to where field was directed later becoming permanent
that way,
Dewey Mclaren proposed the possibility of Dinosaur extinction by
extra-terrestrial impact. They found out the deposition of iridium in rock
strata low on earth, (but huge in heavenly bodies) that might have came from space and struck to the land here on earth resulting in volcanic eruption
that was so huge that the ash covered the region 10 miles across covering every
leaves, grasses and water making animal die by suffering it.
One South African mine had gone to the depth of 3km below earth surface.
Yellow stone is a super volcano and a restless magma chamber.
Thermophilus aquaticus the one to generate heat resistant enzyme, and can
generate polymerase chain reaction.
Deep in water anyone has gone to talk about it is 86 meter in water.
Mariana trench is the deepest trench in the world, amphipods and
crustaceans and anaerobic organisms live there.
Since water is incompresible and we are mainly made up of water, it is
gases particularly in lungs that cause trouble.
Diving just 100 meter deep, causes lungs to implode and chest wall to
collapse. Air is 80 percent nitrogen. When pressure builds nitrogen transformed
to tiny bubbles, migrating to blood and tissues.
Haldane was the one to sometimes poison himself to test body response and
physiology. He was happy to employ any one, even PM of Spain. Nitrogen tester.
They used to test the influence of nitrogen. Beyond 30 meters nitrogen
becomes intoxicant and produced wild swings in mood. It was hard to perform
such test since the tester also is intoxicated.
You are such a lucky piece of shit to have advanced life haha.
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