"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."-Stephen Hawking

Author Quote

First published in 1988 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3869.A_Brief_History_of_Time">A Brief History of Time </a> resembled <a href="http://www.hawking.org.uk/">Stephen Hawking’s </a>wish to make the most important theories, discoveries and phenomena from the world of physics accessible to everyone with a basic 8th-grade knowledge of math and physics.

A Brief History Of Time By Stephen Hawking - Book Summary

<ol><li>Theories can never be proven. </li><li>Time is not fixed, due to the speed of light. </li><li>There are 3 reasons why time can likely only move forward. </li> </ol>Ready for some physics? Let’s go!

Top 3 Book Less

As children we’re all scientists. We constantly come up with theories, and then test them. For example as a toddler you might have had the theory that a glass will easily survive its fall from the kitchen table A theory, which you probably quickly went on to disprove, much to the frustration of your Mum and Dad. Nowadays, since we’re grown up, we don’t see theories as what they are any more: educated guesses.

Lesson 1: Theories can never be fully proven.

If you come up with the theory that your software startup needs 1,000 clients to thrive and start turning a profit, you almost instantly accept it as true, which leads to lots of disappointment, should you fail in spite of reaching that goal. Hawking says a theory is nothing more than a model, which correctly explains a big number of observations . This has 2 great benefits: <ol><li>You can make definite predictions about the future. </li><li>The theory can always be disproven, if evidence against it comes up. </li> </ol>

For example, a commonly accepted theory until 1903 was that nothing heavier than air could fly. That’s what kept 99% of people from driving their carriages over cliffs and jumping out of windows with wings attached to their back. According to the theory, they wouldn’t be able to fly, and some of the people who tried added credibility to that theory.

However, on December 17th that year, <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-airplane-flies">Orville Wright stayed in the air for 12 seconds in the gasoline aircraft he and his brother had built </a>. When he half crashed half landed after 120 feet in the air, the theory was disproven. Hawking loves the fact that theories can always be proven wrong in the future, and so should you. Stop assuming so much, and start finding evidence!

If you’ve ever wondered what <a href="http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html">Einstein’s theory of relativity </a>was all about, you’ve come to the right place. The general statement of this theory is that the laws of physics are the same for all freely moving observers and objects . Because <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light">the speed of light constantly being 186,000 miles per second </a>is one such law, it means that no matter where you are or where you’re going, the speed with which light reaches you is the same.

Lesson 2: Due to the constant speed of light, time is not fixed.

However, <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/the-order-of-time-summary/">time </a>is always determined by dividing the distance something has traveled by its speed, right? For example if you take your car and drive for 100 miles at 100 mph, it will take you exactly an hour to get to your destination. But if one person travels 186,000 miles towards a ray of light and another travels 186,000 miles away from it, but the speed of light is constant, the light would reach the first person 2 seconds faster – that is at a different point in time. That’s the reason why time is relative and why Mr. Einstein has become so famous.

Different times for different people is one thing, but how about time travel? Can time move backwards? Hawking says it’s not impossible, but unlikely, for 3 reasons. 1. Time only moves forward thermodynamically. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(arrow_of_time)">Entropy </a>is the tendency to increase disorder wherever possible.

Lesson 3: Time can most likely only move forward, for 3 reasons.

or example your coffee mug only stays in mug form, because force is holding it together. As soon as you drop it, it’ll be happy to increase its entropy in the form of a whole bunch of shards. However, it would never spontaneously reassemble itself on its own (and thus decrease entropy), so thermodynamically, time only moves forward.

2. Time only moves forward psychologically. You can never “remember” the future. For example after your mug breaks you can remember what it looked like before, but you can never know the exact position of the shards on the floor before you break it.

As the universe expands, its entropy increases. Since entropy constantly increasing also means that time moves forward, due to reason number 1, this adds to the point.However, the universe could start contracting again, after reaching its maximum extension, thus reversing entropy and also time.

But Hawking says that we wouldn’t know: our bodies rely on entropy to break the food we eat down into its particles, which give us energy. So if time were to ever start reversing, we’d have to die first. But then again, who knows if that’ll ever happen, right? After all, it’s just a theory.

Holy cow. If you want a book to wonder, marvel, think and scratch your head at, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3869.A_Brief_History_of_Time">A Brief History of Time </a> is the one for you. If you’re curious about the universe we live in, go read this book.

A Brief History of Time Book Review

Read my A Brief History Of Time summary to find out why theories are great, how time isn't fixed, and why time only moves forward (probably).

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Philosophy

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Technology & The Future

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Learning & Education

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Problem Solving

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Science & Nature

A Brief History Of Time Summary

One of Rolls-Royce’s stories is that three-quarters of the cars the company has ever produced are still on the road.

Rolls-Royce

75% of the cars that Rolls-Royce has ever produced are still on the road today.

history

History

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

Rolls-Royce Cars

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337189-a-universe-from-nothing">A Universe From Nothing </a>will enlarge your knowledge of our expanding universe by showing you how it began, what we’re learning about it now, and what will happen to it in the future.

A Universe From Nothing - Book Summary 

"The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, your atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand."-Lawrence M. Krauss

Author Quot

When I was a kid I would sleep with my head at the foot of my bed so I could gaze at the stars as I drifted off each night. I loved recognizing constellations like Orion and the Big Dipper, seeing the moon, and wondering what was out there.  As I grew, my love for the stars did also. I got a telescope for my eighteenth birthday and still remember the night I found our neighboring Andromeda galaxy in it. Excitedly I told my family members that the image we were seeing that night was about 2 million years old!

Book Overview 

If you’re fascinated by <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/cosmos-summary/">the stars and our universe </a>then you’re going to love <a href="https://www.lawrencemkrauss.com/about">Lawrence Krauss </a>’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337189-a-universe-from-nothing">A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing </a>. It’ll show you the <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/on-the-origin-of-species-summary/">origins </a>of the great expanse, what we’re learning about it today, and even what the end of it all will be like.

<ol><li>Scientific research confirms that the expansion of our universe is real and is getting faster. </li><li>If you think there’s nothing in the billions of miles between planets, stars, and galaxies, you’re wrong. </li><li>Eventually we will only be able to see our own galaxy due to the expansion of our universe. </li> </ol>

Everything we know began in the big bang 14 billion years ago. A lot has happened since then, including a lot of expansion of human knowledge about <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/an-astronauts-guide-to-life-on-earth-summary/">outer space </a>. We’ve come a long way since thinking that the Earth was the center of our solar system!  Today we know through observation that our universe is expanding. Physicist George Lemaitre predicted that the theory of relativity that came from Einstein meant that our universe was not stationary but growing. Even <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/einstein-his-life-and-universe-summary/">Einstein </a>rejected this theory, but not long after he was corrected by observation.

Lesson 1: Our universe is expanding

To understand how scientists figured this out, you need to know about the Doppler Effect. If you’re sitting somewhere that you can hear the cars going by, you’ll notice that the noise a car makes is different as it moves past you. Take a moment and try it out yourself, it’s pretty interesting!

Research confirms that this same effect happens with light. Objects that are moving away from us have different shades of color than those heading in our direction. In observation of the colors that celestial bodies have, researchers found that almost everything in our universe is moving away from us. Looking more closely, they’ve discovered that the farther away an object is, it is moving away more rapidly. This confirms the theory that our universe is expanding faster.

So we know that the universe is expanding, but what is causing this? Just as blowing a balloon up requires air, so does our universe have a force pushing it outward. The trouble is, there’s nothing we can observe that’s causing this. Physicists thus call this force in empty space “dark” energy. But they still can’t explain where this propelling force comes from or even what it really is.

Lesson 2: Dark energy and dark matter fill Emptin

In addition to this mysterious energy, scientists have also discovered that most of the universe is <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/invisible-influence-summary/">invisible </a>. They call this dark matter, but that’s a little confusing because we can’t see it. A better way to think of this unknown substance is invisible matter due to the fact that it’s not visible to any of our instruments.

In addition to this mysterious energy, scientists have also discovered that most of the universe is <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/invisible-influence-summary/">invisible </a>. They call this dark matter , but that’s a little confusing because we can’t see it. A better way to think of this unknown substance is invisible matter due to the fact that it’s not visible to any of our instruments. So how did we discover these strange pieces of our universe? Calculations to determine the rotation rate of our universe show that there must be more mass than we can see. In other words, the observable universe just isn’t heavy enough to cause the speed at which we are<warningtag> rotating. Thus, invisible matter must exist. </warningtag>

So how did we discover these strange pieces of our universe? Calculations to determine the rotation rate of our universe show that there must be more mass than we can see. In other words, the observable universe just isn’t heavy enough to cause the speed at which we are rotating. Thus, invisible matter must exist.  Next time you look up at the night sky and see the darkness between stars you can remember that there is an invisible something there pushing our universe outward.

Alright so we’ve mentioned the invisible part and the observable section of our universe. But there’s another area of the great expanse we haven’t discussed. That’s the part of the universe that we cannot see because it’s too far away.

Lesson 3: For now we see neighboring galaxies 

Outer space is really big. It’s so vast that we have to speak in terms of light years, or how far light travels in one year. As I mentioned before, when I was looking at the closest galaxy to ours, it was two million light years away! But most objects are much farther than that. Some are so far away that their light will never reach us. And the number of celestial bodies that we can’t see is increasing.

Think of the example of a balloon expanding again. Pretend you’re blowing up a balloon and that it represents our universe and can grow outward forever. Because it’s “blowing up” faster each day, eventually everything will be so far apart that not even the light from other objects will reach us!

That means that scientists trillions of years from now will have no celestial evidence of <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/the-tao-of-physics-summary/">the Big Bang </a>, dark matter and dark energy, or the expansion of the universe. They would wrongly conclude that our stationary, unmoving galaxy is all that exists.

I’ve always loved learning about space and our universe, and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337189-a-universe-from-nothing">A Universe From Nothing </a>didn’t disappoint. While some of the concepts in this book are complex, I like how it explains them in a way that we all can understand. The attachment to the dogma that science rules over faith was a bit much for me, but I still enjoyed this book and think you will too!

A Universe From Nothing - Book Review

The 20-year-old college <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/seven-brief-lessons-on-physics-summary/">physics </a>student who is curious to know more about how our universe began, the 54-year-old who is fascinated by the stars and wants to understand them better, and anyone who wants to learn about the past, present, and future of our universe.

Who would I recommend the A Universe From Nothing to?

This A Universe From Nothing Summary will make you smarter by teaching you about the past, present, and future of our expanding universe.

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Science Fiction

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Books

A Universe From Nothing Summary

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30971755-a-crack-in-creation">A Crack In Creation </a>will teach you all about the power of gene editing that is made possible with CRISPR by detailing how it works, the benefits and opportunities it opens up, and the ethical risks of using it on humans.

A Crack In Creation - Book Summary 

"The power to control species's genetic future is awesome and terrifying. Deciding how to handle it may be the biggest challenge we have ever faced."-Jennifer A. Doudna

Author Quote 

We live in a day of <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/the-hero-factor-summary/">superhero </a>movies where we see scrawny young men go into a machine and come out super soldiers. It seems like science fiction to think that a similar <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/how-not-to-die-summary/">improvement to the human condition </a>could be possible. But we also are in a time of amazing technological and <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-summary/">medical advancements </a>that now make the idea of a real-life Captain America not so far-fetched. CRISPR is a region of repeated DNA in bacteria that, according to new research, has wild possibilities for improving our lives. From eliminating diseases to helping us create healthier food, this new opportunity can help us do it all.

CRISPR is a region of repeated DNA in bacteria that, according to new research, has wild possibilities for improving our lives. From eliminating diseases to helping us create healthier food, this new opportunity can help us do it all.

This is what you’ll learn about in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30971755-a-crack-in-creation">A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution </a>. You’re going to be blown away by some of the amazing genetic advances that author <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna">Jennifer Doudna </a>’s research may allow.

<ol><li>CRISPR is a process that happens naturally in bacteria, and scientists have found out how to use it on humans. </li><li>The ability to edit genes can significantly enhance our way of life by how it affects agriculture and the prevalence of diseases common to mankind. </li><li>As exciting as this new opportunity is, there are some questions and implications that we need to work out before we go further. </li> </ol>

Top 3 Book Lessons 

The acronym CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Sounds complex, right?  Think of it more simply as a part of bacterial DNA that lets us cut and modify genes as we please.

Lesson 1: Scientists have found a way to utilize

To <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/a-mind-for-numbers-summary/">understand </a>how this all works, you need to know about three parts that allow these bacteria to cut through virus DNA to fight it: <ol><li>CRISPR-associated, or CAS gene, specifically the Cas9 gene </li><li>CRISPR RNA </li><li>tracrRNA </li> </ol>

Each of these three components has an important role in what bacteria does to modify DNA. The Cas9 gene lets the bacteria cut through virus DNA to disable its effects. It knows where to slice because CRISPR RNA acts as a messenger to tell Cas9 where to go make the snip. Last we have tracrRNA, which turns on the cutting action.

So we know that this happens naturally in our world, all around us, all the time. The next question researchers asked was whether they could use CRISPR to cut specific DNA in a lab. And it turns out this is possible.

When CRISPR makes it’s slice, there’s a space right afterward that the body begins to repair itself. Utilizing that opportunity, scientists can insert whatever DNA sequence they want to, which modifies the traits of the organism. Thus, we can change whatever we desire to be different about our genes. This can upgrade many aspects of our lives as we’re about to see.

Let’s take a look at some of the practical applications of this tool. The ability to modify <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/the-biology-of-belief-summary/">genes </a>gives us a chance to create crops that produce more, resist sickness, and are <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/super-brain-summary/">healthier </a>.  The citrus industry, for example, has a problem with what’s called yellow dragon disease. Utilizing gene editing, we could end the decimation of plantations in Asia that this plague causes. We can also modify our food to be better for us, like taking trans fats out of soybean oil for example.

Lesson 2: We can use gene editing to grow healthier crops

Some pigs in Canada have already been genetically modified to have better digestion. This reduces phosphorus in their waste that causes algal blooms that kill aquatic animals.  For humans, we’ve got over 7,000 diseases that result from a single gene mutation each. All of these could be gone with CRISPR. Even HIV, which affects millions around the world, may be preventable with gene editing. It could also find a cure for fatal diseases like muscular dystrophy.

This amazing new tool even has a chance at stopping <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/when-breath-becomes-air-summary/">cancer </a>entirely. Because DNA mutations cause cancer, the ability to cut and modify DNA at will might be able to stop it. All of this sounds amazing, but there are some roadblocks to this nearly sickness-free world you’re imagining.

The author’s breakthrough research was going well in 2014 when an entrepreneur had an interesting pitch to co-author Samuel Sternberg. They wanted him to help create a “CRISPR baby.” Sternberg declined this offer, but this began a string of ethical questions about gene editing that we still need to answer.

Lesson 3: Although this new breakthrough sounds all good

Is it ethically okay to use something like this to choose a baby’s gender or modify it to be stronger or prettier? Concerns began to arise in the author’s mind about someone abusing CRISPR. It got so bad at one point that she once had a dream that she met Adolf Hitler, who asked about the process. The thought of a psychopath like him getting this technology terrified <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna">Doudna </a>.

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna">Doudna </a>suggests reviewing three themes as we figure out the next steps of <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/the-sports-gene-summary/">gene </a>editing technology. The first is safety, which she feels will soon be taken care of as the science of CRISPR advances. Next is the ethical component. While eliminating diseases is amazing, some might wonder why we should stop there. It may not be long before unregulated gene editing allows people, mostly the rich, to buy better bodies for themselves.

Which brings us to her last point of the regulations that governments must make. This has already begun with an International Summit on Human Gene Editing back in 2015. We can only hope that meetings like this one will continue to progress efforts to enforce limits. I for one hope that we will soon see a time when we can use CRISPR to make a better world for all of us.

Whoa, what a mind-blowing idea! <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30971755-a-crack-in-creation">A Crack In Creation </a>is fascinating, exciting, and a little scary all at the same time. I’ve always been interested in <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/a-brief-history-of-everyone-who-ever-lived-summary/">genetics </a>and physiology and knew a little about CRISPR, but this book gave me a lot more in-depth knowledge that I’m sure you’ll enjoy too!

A Crack In Creation - Book Review

The 43-year-old lawmaker who is curious about the possibilities and issues surrounding gene editing, the 24-year-old who is majoring in biology and is curious to learn more about CRISPR, and anyone who wants to discover how this amazing breakthrough works.

Who would I recommend the A Crack In Creation to?

This A Crack In Creation Summary teaches the basics around how the CRISPR gene editing tool works, where it came from, and how it affects our future.

health

Health

artificialintelligence

Artificial Intelligence

A Crack In Creation Summary

Q. What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?<ul><li>Nearly everyone would die.</li><li>At the equator, the Earth’s surface is moving at about 470 meters per second—relative to its axis. If the Earth stopped and the air didn’t, the result would be a sudden thousand-mile-per-hour wind.</li><li>Day and night would each be six months long.</li></ul>

Global Windstorm


Q. What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light?<ul><li>It would, however, start to eat away at the surface, blasting tiny fragments of the ball in all directions. These fragments would be going so fast that when they hit air molecules, they would trigger two or three more rounds of fusion.And with a great roar, the blast wave would arrive, tearing up trees and shredding houses.</li></ul>

Relativistic Baseball

Q. What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface?<ul><li>You could probably survive treading water anywhere from 10 to 40 hours.</li><li>Spent fuel from nuclear reactors is highly radioactive. Water is good for both radiation shielding and cooling, so fuel is stored at the bottom of pools for a couple of decades until it’s inert enough to be moved into dry casks.</li></ul>

Spent Fuel Pool


Q. What would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?<ul><li>It doesn’t really affect the planet. Earth outweighs us by a factor of over ten trillion. On average, we humans can vertically jump maybe half a meter on a good day. Even if the Earth were rigid and responded instantly, it would be pushed down by less than an atom’s width.</li></ul>

Everybody Jump


Q. Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?<ul><li>The principle here is pretty simple. If you fire a bullet forward, the recoil pushes you back. So if you fire downward, the recoil should push you up.</li><li>With enough machine guns, you could fly.</li></ul>

Machine-Gun Jetpack

Q. If you suddenly began rising steadily at 1 foot per second, how exactly would you die? Would you freeze or suffocate first? Or something else?<ul><li>Above 8000 meters—above the tops of all but the highest mountains—the oxygen content in the air is too low to support human life. Near this zone, you would experience a range of symptoms, possibly including confusion, dizziness, clumsiness, impaired vision, and nausea.</li><li>The result would be a rapid loss of consciousness and death.</li></ul>

Rising Steadily

Q. How much physical space does the Internet take up?<ul><li>The storage industry produces in the neighborhood of 650 million hard drives per year. If most of them are 3.5-inch drives, that’s 8 liters (2 gallons) of hard drive per second.</li><li>This means the last few years of hard-drive production represents the majority of global storage capacity—would just about fill an oil tanker.</li><li>So, by that measure, the Internet is smaller than an oil tanker.</li></ul>

Size Of Internet 

Q. How dangerous is it, really, to be in a pool during a thunderstorm?<ul><li>Pretty dangerous. Water is conductive, but that’s not the biggest problem—the biggest problem is that if you’re swimming, your head is poking up from a large flat surface. But lightning striking the water near you would still be bad. The 20,000 amps spread outward—mostly over the surface.</li></ul>

Lightning

Q. What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair?<ul><li>If it were sitting still, the current would quickly heat and melt the metal.</li><li>But since it would be moving along so quickly, it would exit the channel before it could be warmed by more than a few degrees. It would continue on to its target relatively unaffected.</li></ul>

Bullet Vs Lightning 

Q. How much computing power could we could achieve if the entire world population stopped whatever we are doing right now and started doing calculations?How would it compare to a modern-day computer or smartphone?<ul><li>The processor in a mobile phone could do calculations about 70 times faster than the entire world population. A new high-end desktop PC chip would increase that ratio to 1500.</li><li>Under Moore’s law–based projections, and using these simulation figures, computers won’t pull ahead of humans until the year 2036.7</li></ul>

Human Computer


Q. If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince?<ul><li>If the asteroid had a radius of 1.75 meters, then in order to have Earthlike gravity at the surface, it would need to have a mass of about 500 million tons. This is roughly equal to the combined mass of every human on Earth.</li><li>The escape velocity at the surface would be about 5 meters per second. That’s slower than a sprint, but still pretty fast.</li></ul>

Little Planet


Q. From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?<ul><li>No matter how fast it was going when it reached the lower layers of the atmosphere, it would quickly slow down to terminal velocity. No matter the starting height, it always takes six or seven minutes to drop from 25 kilometers to the ground.</li><li>When the steak does finally hit the ground, it will be traveling at terminal velocity—about 30 meters per second. Steak will remain as it is.</li></ul>

Steak Drop


Q. How hard would a puck have to be shot to be able to knock the goalie himself backward into the net?<ul><li>This can’t really happen.</li><li>If you’re like me, when you first saw this question, you might’ve imagined the puck leaving a cartoon-style hockey-puck-shaped hole. But that’s because our intuitions are shaky about how materials react at very high speeds.</li><li>Instead, a different mental picture might be more accurate: Imagine throwing a ripe tomato—as hard as you can—at a cake. That’s about what would happen.</li></ul>

Hockey Puck

Q. This may be a bit gruesome, but . . . if someone’s DNA suddenly vanished, how long would that person last?<ul><li>If you lost your DNA, you would instantly be about a third of a pound lighter.</li><li>Losing your DNA would most likely result in abdominal pain, nausea, dizziness, rapid immune system collapse, and death within days or hours from either rapid systemic infection or systemwide organ failure.</li></ul>

No More DNA


Q. How much Force power can Yoda output?<ul><li>Combining this with the X-wing mass and lift rate gives us our peak power output: That’s enough to power a block of suburban homes. It’s also equal to about 25 horsepower. At current electricity prices, Yoda would be worth about $2/hour.</li><li>So Yoda sounds like our best bet as an energy source. But with world electricity consumption pushing 2 terawatts, it would take a hundred million Yodas to meet our demands.</li></ul>

Yoda


Q. What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? Then, while falling, I release the helium and fill the balloon. How long of a fall would I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely?<ul><li>If you inflated the balloons quickly, possibly by connecting many canisters to it at once, you’d be able to slow your fall.</li><li>Just don’t use too much helium, or you’ll end up floating at 16,000 feet like Larry Walters.</li></ul>

Falling with Helium


Q. Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet?<ul><li>An absolute baseline energy requirement: 4 gigajoules per person. No matter how we do it, whether we use rockets or a cannon or a space elevator or a ladder, moving a 65-kilogram person—out of the Earth’s gravity well requires at least this much energy.</li><li>Launching all of humanity (total weight: around 400 million tons) would therefore take tens of trillions of tons of fuel.</li></ul>

Everybody Out


Q. I read about some researchers who were trying to produce sperm from bone marrow stem cells. If a woman were to have sperm cells made from her own stem cells and impregnate herself, what would be her relationship to her daughter?<ul><li>A child from a parent who self-fertilized would be like a clone of the parent. But the child wouldn’t have all the genes of the parent. Half the child’s chromosomes would have their “partner” chromosomes replaced by a copy of themselves.</li><li>It’s what you would expect in a child of three generations of consecutive sibling marriages.</li></ul>

Self-Fertilization


Q. How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation?<ul><li>Neutrinos are ghostly particles that barely interact with the world at all. Look at your hand—there are about a trillion neutrinos from the Sun passing through it every second.</li><li>If you observed a supernova from 1 AU away—and you somehow avoided being incinerated, vaporized—even the flood of ghostly neutrinos would be dense enough to kill you.</li></ul>

Lethal Neutrinos


Q. How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?<ul><li>The two main things protecting you from bumps in the road are the tires and the suspension.</li><li>Cars generate lift. The air flowing around a car exerts all kinds of forces on it.</li><li>At the range of 150–300 mph, a typical sedan would lift off the ground, tumble, and crash . . . before you even hit the bump.</li></ul>

Speed Bump

Q. How quickly would the oceans drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space were created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? How would the Earth change as the water was being drained?<ul><li>It would actually take hundreds of thousands of years for the ocean to drain. Even though the opening is wider than a basketball court, and the water is forced through at incredible speeds, the oceans are huge.</li></ul>

Drain the Oceans


Q. If you call a random phone number and say “God bless you,” what are the chances that the person who answers just sneezed?<ul><li>It’s hard to find good numbers on this, but it’s probably about 1 in 40,000.</li><li>Before you pick up the phone, you should also keep in mind that there’s roughly a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance that the person you’re calling just murdered someone.</li></ul>

Random Sneeze Call


Q. Assuming a zero-gravity environment with an atmosphere identical to Earth’s, how long would it take the friction of air to stop an arrow fired from a bow? Would it eventually come to a standstill and hover in midair?<ul><li>The arrow would slow down quickly. Air resistance is proportional to speed squared, which means that when it’s going fast, the arrow would experience a lot of drag.</li><li>But at minimum, it would probably fly 5 to 10 kilometers.</li></ul>

Weightless Arrow


Q. When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?<ul><li>Either the 2060s or the 2130s. There are not a lot of dead people on Facebook. The main reasons for this is that Facebook—and its users—are young. The average Facebook user has gotten older over the last few years, but the site is still used at a much higher rate by the young than by the old.</li></ul>

Facebook of the Dead


Q. I was absentmindedly stirring a cup of hot tea, when I got to thinking, “Aren’t I actually adding kinetic energy into this cup?” I know that stirring does help to cool down the tea, but what if I were to stir it faster? Would I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring?<ul><li>No.</li><li>If you stir hard enough that your tea cavitates, its surface area will increase very rapidly, and it will cool to room temperature in seconds. No matter how hard you stir your tea, it’s not going to get any warmer.</li></ul>

Stirring Tea


Q. What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop?<ul><li>In this storm, all that water instead condenses into one giant drop, a sphere of water over a kilometer in diameter.</li><li>The drop is now falling at 90 meters per second (200 mph).</li><li>When the water contacted the surface, you’d be crushed to death—the shockwave would briefly create pressures exceeding those at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.</li><li>Splash continues outward, demolishing all structures out to distances of 20 or 30 kilometers.</li></ul>

Raindrop


Q. What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? How many perfect scores would there be?<ul><li>The probability of getting all 158 questions right is: That’s one in 27 quinquatrigintillion.</li><li>How certain is it? Well, if they each used a computer to take the test a million times each day, and continued this every day for five billion years—the chance of any of them ever getting a perfect score on just the math section would be about 0.0001 percent.</li></ul>

SAT Guessing


The creator of the incredibly popular webcomic xkcd presents his heavily researched answers to his fans' oddest questions, including “What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool?” and “Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?” 100,000 first printing.

From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have an enormous, dedicated following, as do his deeply researched answers to his fans' strangest questions. The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical: - What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool? - Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? - What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City? - Are fire tornadoes possible? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and wit, gleefully and accurately explaining everything from the relativistic effects of a baseball pitched at near the speed of light to the many horrible ways you could die while building a periodic table out of all the actual elements. The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with the most popular answers from the xkcd website. What If? is an informative feast for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical.

Randall Munroe, a former NASA roboticist, is the creator of the webcomic xkcd and the author of xkcd: volume 0. The International Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after him; asteroid 4942 Munroe is big enough to cause a mass extinction if it ever hits a planet like Earth. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Randall Munroe

What If?

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49127551-2030">2030 </a>uses the current trajectory of the world, based on sociological, demographic, and technological trends, to outline the changes we can expect to happen in our lives by the beginning of the next decade.

2030 - Book Summary 

"Breakthroughs occur not when someone works within the established paradigm but when assumptions are abandoned, rules are ignored, and creativity runs amok."-Mauro F. Guille

If you told someone in 2019 about everything that would happen in 2020, they might not believe you. Who could’ve predicted this one year would bring a novel global pandemic, raging wildfires, a stock market crash, and worldwide racial justice protests, and much more? In these unprecedented times, it’s more important than ever to have an idea of what’s coming so we can prepare. Of course, things like a pandemic can’t really be predicted. But there is a way to make informed predictions about some things that might be headed our way.

In the book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49127551-2030">2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything </a>by <a href="http://www.mauroguillen.com/about/">Mauro F. Guillen </a>, we get informed predictions of where today’s trends will put us by the year 2030. Using a range of current demographic and sociological trends along with new technological advancements, Guillen gives a convincing portrait of what the next decade holds for our world.

Some predictions include a drastic demographic change because of low birth rates, increased middle class, increased female <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/7-strategies-for-wealth-and-happiness-summary/">wealth </a>, climate change that will affect city life, and exciting technological advancements. His detailed predictions will give you a great resource for preparing for the exciting and not-so-excited changes coming our way in the next decade.

<ol><li>Our world will never be the same again because of declining birth rates. </li><li>In 2030, women will have more than half of the world’s wealth. </li><li>Cryptocurrency will continue to rise in popularity, and by 2030 we might tap into its full potential. </li> </ol>

Top 3 Book Ideas 

A little more than 50 years ago, many people were worried about the prospect of overpopulation. With the declining birth rate, this isn’t as much of a concern for most people. Guillen argues that what we should be worried about in the next decade is actually the opposite: a baby drought.  Since the 1970s, US women have, on average, had fewer than two kids each. So basically, we don’t even have enough children to replace the current generation at the current rate.

Lesson 1:  Declining birth rates are making our world change permanently.

Why does this matter? Some people might say that this could be a good thing because of our planet’s limited resources. However, the economic system we have is reliant on the next generation if we are going to take care of the elderly. Their taxes are desperately needed to help foot the bill for the aging generation’s pensions.

The reason the birth rate has declined dramatically is that there are more women in the workforce.  Because those women are actively working, they are more likely to wait until they are established in their field before having children. Because fertility drops with <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-age-of-cryptocurrency-summary/">age </a>, they tend to have fewer children if they decide to start a family.

But that’s not the only reason. People are also having less sex. The Archives of Sexual Behavior published a study that found that in the 2010s, Americans had sex nine times less per year on average than in the 1990s. Why? Part of this has to do with the fact that technology means we now have many more enjoyable distractions in our homes. Sex is just one enjoyable thing we can choose from to do on a night in.

But not every country is experiencing this drastic decline in birth rates. There is currently a population boom in sub-Saharan Africa. The author says this will have two effects in the next decade. Because this part of the continent relies on imported food, markets for food and developing agriculture in this area will become a trillion-dollar sector. Second, Western nations might have to change stances on immigration because they might need to bring in immigrant workers from this area to care for and fund the huge growth in retirees.

One major change coming in 2030 is that women will hold more than half of the world’s wealth for the first time. Right now, women in the workplace face some big challenges when it comes to wealth advancement. Many women are also primary caregivers to children and family members. When she is a primary caregiver, a woman often loses a few years of work, which means missing out on salary advances that male counterparts enjoy.

Lesson 2:  Women will have over 50% of the world’s wealth by 2030.

But the good news for working women is that the pool of qualified workers will shrink thanks to the combination of low birth rates and an aging population. This change means that businesses will start relying on working caregivers more than they ever have.

Gallup polls report that we’re increasingly ready for this shift in working women. A recent poll shows we are more positively disposed toward women who hold positions of <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-power-of-no-summary/">power </a>than ever. Increased numbers of working women and women in leadership positions mean women will have more wealth than ever in the coming decade.

With this change comes changes in global spending. Drawing from research on female spending habits, the author predicts this change will mean we will see increases in spending on education, health care, and insurance. Typically, women have been bigger spenders in this area. When it comes to investments, women will likely go for safer investments such as index funds.

As technology moves forward, money is also changing. People are increasingly comfortable with more abstract forms of money. The next potential revolution in money is cryptocurrency. While Bitcoin might seem a little bit too on the fringe for your average person, by 2030, the author predicts cryptocurrencies will become mainstream. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin work completely online through a peer-to-peer system. Bitcoin isn’t associated with any government or even any bank. All transactions are available online for the public. They are shown on the public record called a blockchain.

Lesson 3:  In the next few years, cryptocurrency’s influence will rise.

Each block is a recorded transaction, and they are all strung together to make an encrypted blockchain. The blockchain’s code means it cannot be tampered with because it would be immediately known. This makes it the world’s most secure form of currency.  Even though it comes from solid technology, people are still mostly sticking to bank accounts rather than switching to crypto. It’s understandable since its valuation is always fluctuating all over the place.

But blockchain technology has huge potential to revolutionize money as we know it. It would mean no more middlemen to process transactions and no more money controlled by banks and governments. It could also help us be more ethical in our spending.

An example of this is Dexio, an app that uses the <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/blockchain-revolution-summary/">blockchain </a>to track diamond transactions so consumers can avoid buying blood diamonds. The technology could also make e-voting more secure as well as decrease online piracy. This is one of the many ways cryptocurrency could completely change money as we know it; if only we can finally embrace it.

I love speculating about the future, so naturally, I really enjoyed <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49127551-2030">2030 </a>. The great thing about this book is that it’s not just guessing, but the authors base the information on current trends in society. I can’t wait to see how things actually shake out over the next 10 years!

2030 - Book Review

The 27-year-old that works in the tech industry and wants to stay ahead, the 65-year-old who feels behind because of the accelerating changes they’ve seen in the world throughout their lifetime, and anyone curious to know what the future holds.

Who would I recommend 2030 to?

The 2030 Summary explains the speculation of future by using the current trajectory in the world, and outlining changes we expect to happen.

2030 Summary

Typically, stars are not visible in photographs of astronauts on spacewalks because the light reflected off astronaut suits, the International Space Station, and even the Earth is so bright that it drowns out the dimmer light of the background stars. This is similar to trying to see the night sky stars from the middle of a city on Earth - the brighter lights from the buildings drown out the stars. But don't worry; the stars are still there!Astronauts often photograph the night sky away from the Sun's glare, and with the right exposure settings on their camera, and gets some stunning images.

Where Are The Stars?

#shorts #space #didyouknowWhy aren't the stars visible in the pictures of astronauts on spacewalks? Typically, stars are not visible in photographs of astron...

Why aren't the stars visible in the pictures of astronauts? #shorts

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