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.