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Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 13:04:56 +0800
From: mikecurley <djmikecurley@gmail.com>
Reply-To: mikecurley@bigfoot.com
To: info@transworld-publishers.co.uk
Subject: Quoting Bill Bryson on the Internet

Dear sirs,

I've never done anything like this before - so don't know the drill - apologies in advance if I'm barking up the wrong trees.

I've read and enjoyed Bill Bryson's 'A short history of nearly everything' - it made me think....

I'd like to put 'my thoughts' up on my web-site. Each thought preceded by the Bill Bryson phrase/sentence which prompted it.

I have put up my first musings here - http://mikecurley-lived.netfirms.com/BillBryson.htm - so you can see the context and the sort of comments I'm making.

Does this infringe your rights etc...??

Will you allow me to complete and publish my thoughts in my web-site??

Should I add any references to yourselves, Bill Bryson...anybody...??

Should I pay anybody - anything??

I hope you can help,

Mike Curley

PS - I know Ealing and the Uxbridge Road well - having traveled on trolley buses from Hayes to Ealing Broadway - and later on attended
Ealing Technical College - my best wishes to Squires, Bentalls and Lilley & Skinner - if they still exist!!

mc

........ and received the following reply on 17th August, 2006....

Dear Mike,

Thank you for checking with us about the use of these quotes.  Unfortunately,
Bill Bryson only allows his work to be quoted for the use of educational and
charitable publications and I am unable to grant you permission in this case.
The agent has suggested that you could find a way of referring
to/paraphrasing the book by quoting directly from Bill.  I am sorry to
disappoint you and hope this will not effect your web-site too much.

Best wishes,
Joanna

Phrase	Initial thought provoked
trillions of atoms create you	"I" don't really exist.... nor does "anything" - Everything and anything "I" perceive, is only a perception - made by an "I" that doesn't exist - therefore the perception doesn't exist.
atoms are mindless particles,  and not even  alive.
A long human life adds up to about 650,000 hours.	Just a good figure to "note"
your atoms will close you down, then go off to be other things	..re-incarnation?? But not as we've been brought up to believe....
life = carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, calcium, sulphur, some other very ordinary elements	I'd always thought "I" was just a collection of chemicals and electricity... a lucky coincidence - this tends to confirm that bright idea.
Atoms make everything.....water ...air... rocks.... stars.... planets...... distant gassy clouds... swirling nebulae...	If atoms make everything.... what makes the bits in-between atoms...?? Also, what made the atoms?
No rule or law requires the universe to fill itself with small particles of matter or to produce light and gravity and the other properties on which our existence hinges. There needn't actually be a universe at all. For a very long time there wasn't. There were no atoms and no universe for them to float about in. There was nothing - nothing at all anywhere.	Is there just 1 Universe?? Or, many?? And if there was "nothing" does that mean there was no "time", no universe (s)??
Of the billions and billions of species of living things that have existed since the dawn of time, most - 99.99 per cent are no longer around. Life on earth is..... not only brief but very tenuous.	So, it is "natural" for species to come into existence, and go.
Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on this 'i' can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them.	Can I think that small??
shrink a proton down to a billionth of its normal size...... pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter - to build an inflationary universe.... instead - to build a more old-fashioned, standard Big Bang universe.......gather up everything there is - every last mote and particle of matter between here and the edge of creation - and squeeze it into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimensions at all. It is known as a singularity. In either case get ready for a really big bang.	How to make a (our) Universe
Outside the singularity there is no "where". Time doesn't exist. There is no past for it to emerge from.
In three minutes, 98 per cent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe.
ago... 13.7 billion years	the currently calculated age of our universe
the inflation theory......gravity emerged.... joined by electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces...later... elementary particles.... our universe... a hundred billion light years across...created in one million million million million millionths of a second	size and length of time needed to create it
..there may be many universes...each with different attributes......and we simply live in one that combines things in the way that allows us to exist.	so other universes may exist - but maybe in different dimensions - e.g. time or some other unimaginable dimension...
...you can never get to the edge of the universe...... you would come back to where you began.... the universe bends,.... space curves, in a way that allows it to be boundless but infinite. Space cannot properly be said to be expanding.......solar systems and galaxies are not expanding, and space itself is not expanding. Rather galaxies are rushing apart	Don't understand the 'bending/curving' bit - but galaxies etc... rushing apart into the void can understand
..there is no place where you can find the edge of the universe, so there is no place where you can stand at the centre of the universe. ... For us, the universe goes only as far as light has traveled in the billions of years since the universe was formed. This visible universe.... is a million million million million miles across. ... the meta-universe is vastly roomier still..... the number of light years to the edge of this larger, unseen universe would be written not with 10 zeros, not even with 100, but with millions.	Visible and meta-universes - sizes.
About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 24 billion kilometres across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it - 99.9 per cent of the mass of the solar system - went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet.	Birth of our Sun, planets and Earth
In just 200 million years, possibly less, the Earth was essentially formed.	Earth forming took...
.. about 4.4 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into Earth.... to form a companion sphere, the Moon... within a year it had formed. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth's crust...	Birth of the Moon and its forming..
...the ....distance from the Earth to the Sun...is 149.597870691 million kilometres.	I always remember it as 93 million miles.
...the Earth's weight is 5.9725 billion trillion tonnes	Earth's weight..
...chemicals....the number of protons in their nuclei.. is known as their atomic number.... atomic weight...is the number of protons plus the number of neutrons in a given element.	Atomic weight & number
...the rocks were converting mass into energy..... Marie Curie dubbed the effect 'radioactivity'.	so that's what it is....
...energy is not a continuous thing like flowing water but comes in individualised packets, which are called quanta.	Energy doesn't "flow"
E stands for energy, m for mass and c2 for the speed of light squared.	E = mc2
.. energy is liberated matter; matter is energy waiting to happen..........if you are an average-sized adult you will contain no less than 7 * 1018 joules of potential energy - enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs,.... Everything has this kind of energy trapped within it. We're just not very good at getting it out. Even a uranium bomb - the most energetic thing we have produced yet - releases less than 1 per cent of the energy it could release... Einstein's theory explained how radiation worked... by converting mass to energy extremely efficiently....	Energy......
...the speed of light was constant and supreme. Nothing could overtake it.	But surely that's not right....??
Relativity says that space and time are not absolute, but relative both to the observer and to the thing being observed, and the faster one moves the more pronounced these effects become. e.g. annoying music elsewhere - if we move it appears quieter (it's not - but that's how it appears to us).	So when we say "relatively speaking" or "he's my relative" - everything is relative - so we're speaking correctly!!
Gravity is a product of the bending of spacetime	and gravity does not really exist - rather, what moves planets etc.. is the distortion of space and time.
There may be 140 billion galaxies in the visible universe	In 1919 only one was known of... the Milky Way.
The universe is expanding in all directions - at an unexpectedly increasing speed	but objects within the galaxies are not - what's causing the speed-up??
An atom can survive possibly 1035 years	And its size is one ten-millionth of a millimetre
An atom is - protons (positive charge), electrons (negative), neutrons (no charge)	Protons and neutrons are inside the nucleus, whilst electrons spin around it like the blades of a fan.
The nucleus is one-millionth of a billionth of the volume of the atom	Atoms are mostly empty space
Electrons don't fall into the nucleus because they occupy only certain well-defined orbits	They can move from one orbit to another, but they just disappear from one and instantly appear in the other -  without visiting the space in between.- - the quantum leap!!
Fission is the firing of neutrons into the nucleus
Quantum mechanics states...	The electron is a particle which can be described in terms of waves. We can know its path through space or where it is - but never both
Things on a small scale behave nothing like things on a large scale	matter can pop into existence from nothing at all - provided - it disappears again equally quickly
Certain pairs of sub-atomic particles (even separated by big distances) each can instantly "know" what the other is doing.	e.g. the theory said... spin a particle in one direction - and immediately its pair will spin in the opposite direction at the same rate!
This was proven in 1997....	when photons were sent 7 miles in opposite directions and each instantly reacted oppositely to what happened to the other. This is a violation of the Special Theory of Relativity - nothing can outrace the speed of light - but at the sub-atomic level... information could!!
The strong nuclear force binds atoms together. The weak nuclear force controls rates of decay etc..	The weak force is ten billion billion billion times stronger than gravity, and the strong force is stronger still - but their grip reaches only one hundred thousandth the diameter of an atom.
Igneous rocks are created through heating	Sedimentary rocks through laying down of sediments.
Earth's age....4,550 million years	plus or minus 70 million.
Particles can come into being and are gone again in 0.000000000000000000000001 of a second	10 thousand trillion trillion neutrinos hit (and pass straight through)  the Earth every second
There are (today) 150 known particles	With another 100 suspected.
90 to 99 percent of the known universe is composed of "dark matter"
Asteroids orbit between Mars and Jupiter	Each will be about half a million kilometres from its neighbour.
Each year the Earth grows by...	30,000 tonnes of space-dust
From the surface of the Earth to the middle.....	is 6,370 kilometres.
At the centre - everything is weightless	Because all the gravity is above and around - not "below" it.
The Moon and Mars (bodies that don't have a liquid core) do not have magnetism	Remember that...
The Earth's magnetic field reverses itself every 500,000 years or so	and there's no real understanding.. why??
Magnetism is vital in keeping us alive	Protecting us from harmful cosmic rays
The Mount St Helens eruption was equivalent to 500 Hiroshima sized bombs..	and the hot cloud raced out at 1,050 kilometres per hour.
Yellowstone National Park is the largest active volcano in the world..	If Mount St Helens was a pea, then Krakatoa was a golf ball and Yellowstone will be a sphere 6 feet in diameter!!
400 million years ago....	We crawled out of the sea...
We (humans) can live on only 12 per cent of the total land mass	And only 4 per cent of the whole surface
If the Earth were perfectly smooth...	it would be covered by water - everywhere - to a depth of 4 kilometres!!
If the Moon were not there......	The Earth would wobble
The Moon is receding from us (Earth)	At 4 centimetres per year - in 2 billion years - Earth will start to wobble!
There are 92 naturally occuring element on the Earth.	Of every 200 atoms in our bodies - 126 are hydrogen, 51 oxygen, 19 are carbon
The Earth appears accommodating....	Because we evolved to suit it
The atmosphere...	Without it - the Earth would be a ball of ice with an average temperature of -50C. It extends upwards for 190 Kilometres.
At any one time...	1,800 thunderstorms are in progress - 40,000 per day.
Air flows from...	high to low pressure areas
The Earth revolves at....	1,675 kilometres per hour at the Equator - less elsewhere..
Clouds....	Stratus (layered), Cumulus (fluffy), Cirrus (high - thin), Nimbus (rain)
0.035 of the Earth's fresh water...	Is floating around in clouds.
Water molecules....	If they land: in fertile soil, will be re-evapourated within hours or days into groundwater - maybe thousands of years A lake consists of water molecules that have been there around 10 years. Ocean water - 100 years.
The Atlantic is saltier than the Pacific
It takes 1,500 years for water to travel from the North Atlantic to the Mid-Pacific
A potato is 80 per cent water..	A cow is 74%, bacterium is 75%, tomato is 95%, human is 65%.
Without water - a human...	in a couple of days - the lips vanish, gums blacken, the nose withers to half its length, skin around the eyes shrinks and prevents blinking.
Sea water contains..	70 times more salt than we can metabolise... we sweat and cry sea-water.
There are 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of water on the Earth...	Its been there for 3.8 billion years.
97% of all water is in the seas	Pacific 52%, Atlantic 24%, Indian 21%
Fresh Water (3% of total)...	most of it is in ice-sheets - 90% of ice is in Antarctica (2 miles deep) - at the North Pole its only 15 feet deep.
Mariana Trench...	Is 10,918 metres deep.
Organisms living in and around deep-sea vents....	A type of worm - where the water temp was 78C warmer at their heads than their tails
Ocean waters don't get more salty with time because....	The vents act like filetrs.
55 gallon drums filled with radio-active material have been dumped (since 1946) off the Fallarone Islands (near San Francisco)...	When they failed to sink - navy gunners fired at them to let water in....... etc....
There may be  1,000,000 types of protein in the human body	Proteins shouldn't exist..... they cannot exist without DNA and DNA has no purpose without proteins... which came first?? DNA or Proteins??
We shed 10 billion flakes of skin every day	Eeeeeehh...
Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record..	Will we...??
Life on Earth goes extinct - quite regularly	Oh no!!
Plants started land-colonisation about 450 million years ago	Remember that date.....
An isotope is an atom with an abnormal number of neutrons	Worth remembering!!
There isn't any bit of us - that was part of us 9 years ago	What?? Not even my old....
Humans have 46 chromosomes - potatoes have 48!!	Surely it goes up if you eat chips..??
Most of the people you see are relatives	I hope not!!
There is as much as 20 million Kms of DNA inside each of us	More if you're fat??
DNA is not alive	And was discovered in 1869
97% of our DNA is "junk"	And Genes are only instructions to make proteins
The purpose of life is....	To perpetuate DNA
Humans have 35,000 to 40,000 genes	Same as is found in grass
All finished... but aren't we "thinking" now......??