QQC Newton

"He published some of his discoveries, but they were greeted with such contentious stupidity by the leading scientists of the day that he retired back into his shell with a strengthened resolve to work thereafter for his own satisfaction alone."

Accepting something today that is out of your paradigm still takes time. There are scientific theories being made everyday. Whether these theories are true of false, it will be hard to understand the meaning and thought that is put into them. People will always try to explain the unknown through some random shape, most theories will be disproved and will seem almost unbelievable as to how someone came up with it. There are those who give up and move on, and there are others like Newton, who will spend endless hours in what they believe is a correct resolution of the problem.

I wonder what if a modern day Newton were to come out of the shadows and present themselves. I wonder what would happen to society if something we had believed for hundred's of years was proven wrong. How would we as a society adapt compared to Newtons time? Would there be those who would refuse to accept theorems backed up by calculations and evidence?

QQC 4

"Among much else, and without telling anyone, Candvish discovered or anticipated the ... (goes on to list several well known laws)."

To be able to accomplish this much work in his lifetime is such a great feat.Due to his ability of obtaining the resources, he worked on the various concepts of nature and physics. I find it surprising that he chose to keep his work so secretive. Who knows what advancements that could have been made if his work had been known. However, this proves to me that with the resources and commitment, any bright mind can formulate and prove theories that could've been discovered sometime in the future. I wonder if today, there is a person just like Candvish, although secretive, is pondering ideas that we have yet to even consider.

QQC 3

"Newton was a decidedly odd figure…Once he inserted a bodkin-a long needle of the sort used for sewing leather- into his eye and rubbed it around 'betwixt my eye and the bone as near to backside of my eye as I could' just to see what would happen…another occasion, he stared at the sun for as long as he could bear, to determine what effect it would have upon his vision"

I was under the impression that he would have at least some common sense. Who shoves a needle in their eye just to see what would happen? I figured to be smart and to revolutionize math and science you would have to work on ways that don't require you to mutilate your own body. Staring into the sun, anyone with eyes can see that it hurts and is not good for your eyes, let alone the consequences that you could have from staring at it all day. While were are on the subject of being insane lets just combine the two acts together and take a red hot piece of iron and jam it into your eye?

QQC 2

"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 the outside of our galaxy and we can't even see it. It's unimaginable to think that meteors could be traveling towards us at 100,000,000 miles an hour and we wouldn't even be aware of it. Those who are aware of it tend to ignore it because it is either too far away or it is unlikely to happen. If i had this type of knowledge that something this dangerous could possibly be on an intercept course for earth i would be very concerned. Its amazing to think how small we are compared to the rest of the galaxy. For example if you compared humans to earth, we would be nothing to it. Now if you compared the earth to sun, the earth is nothing. Comparing the sun to the milky way the sun would make the sun insignificant. If you compared the milky way to some of the neighboring galaxies, the milky way is either tiny or incomparable due to the massive size differences. It's amazing to think that the universe is so big and our tiny little planet is nothing compared to it all.

Bryson's into Ch.1

"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."

This text was extremely interesting to me because i've never really thought about the conscuenses that one small thing could have. The smallest of decisisons could have greatly altered my life. For example my mother could be drinking while pregnant, my dad not going to prom with that one girl, my grandpa not fighting for the one girl he liked, the possiblilites can go forever. Anything could have happened and anything could have gone wrong. I am just happy that none of it went wrong for me.