"
so far from our own Sun that it's not even
the brightest star in the sky. It is a remarkable thought that that distant
tiny twinlde has enough gravity to hold all these comets in orbit It's not
a very strong bond, so the comets drift in a stately manner, moving at
only about 220 miles an hour. From time to time some of these lonely
comets are nudged out of their nonnal orbit by some slight gravitational
perturbation-a passing star perhaps. Sometimes tlley are ejected into the
emptiness of spacel never to be seen again, but sometimes they all into
a long orbit around the Sun. About three or four of these a year, lmown
as long-period comets, pass through the inner solar system. Just occasionally
these stray visitors smack into something solid, like Bartll. That's
why we've come out here now-because the comet we have come to see
has just begun a long fall toward the center of the solar system. It is
headed fori of all places, Manson, Iowa It is going to talce a long time to
get there-three or four million years at least-50 we'll leave it for now,
and return to it much later in the story."
I find it interesting that so much is going on outside our planet and outside of our solor system and we can't even see it. It's insane to think that meteors could be coming straight for us at like 1029381902830123891092830918290381 miles an hour and we wouldnt even know about it. Even the people that do know about it, disregard it as a problem because either it's too far away or it's too unlikely to happen. I know if i knew something was coming for earth i would be really worried about it. Its also facinating how small we as a human race are. like in compairson of human to earth, we are like nothing. In compairison of earth to sun the earth is like nothing. in comparrison of the sun to the milky way the sun is like nothing. in compairson of the milky way to probably some other neighboring galaxy, the milky way is like nothing. It's so facinating to think that the universe is so big and how we are litterally nothing, not a thing that we could ever do will impact anything other than our spec of a society. We are basically not even part of the big picture. its scary almost.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
QQC
"Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely-make that miraculously-fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result in you."
I found this piece of text from the reading to be extremely interesting because i never really thought that if even one small thing had happneed to any member in my family tree then i would not have been born. The smallest of decisisons could have greatly altered my entire existance. Mother drinking while pregnant, the college my parents whent to, my grandparents and how they met, my great grandfather surviving world war 2, the list goes on from before then. Anything that could have gone wrong didn't go wrong and anything that could have altered me in any way didn't happen. Just the mere fact of it, blows me away.
I found this piece of text from the reading to be extremely interesting because i never really thought that if even one small thing had happneed to any member in my family tree then i would not have been born. The smallest of decisisons could have greatly altered my entire existance. Mother drinking while pregnant, the college my parents whent to, my grandparents and how they met, my great grandfather surviving world war 2, the list goes on from before then. Anything that could have gone wrong didn't go wrong and anything that could have altered me in any way didn't happen. Just the mere fact of it, blows me away.
New Math Blogger
Not entirly sure what is suppose to go here but ya, take it or leave it this is whats goin here. :/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)