A.
Carolina parakeets fly up at the sounds of gunfire but return almost at once to check on fallen comrades. They've gone extinct because of humans.
B.
No part of your body is more than nine years old. Even parts of your liver and brain renew themselves.
C.
Darwin kept his theory to himself because he knew the storm it would cause.
D.
Fertilization is to the second, maybe to the nanosecond; if it had happened a nanosecond earlier or later, you would not be you.
E.
Anything that is true of E. coli must be true of elephants, only more so. Jacques Monod
F.
We had a massive ice age right before the Cambrian explosion: it ended because of volcanoes. "The idea is that we were saved by volcanoes."
G.
Because of our hands, our arms, and our ability to throw, we are the only creatures that can harm at a distance.
H.
"ONE OF THE HARDEST IDEAS FOR HUMANS TO ACCEPT IS THAT WE ARE NOT THE CULMINATION OF ANYTHING." Stephen Jay Gould
I.
The earth radiates heat, which can be felt in coal mines.
J.
Every object that has mass creates a little depression in the fabric of the cosmos. Gravity in this view is no longer so much a thing as an outcome- 'not a force but a byproduct of the warping of spacetime,' in the words of the physicist Michio Kakum who goes on: 'In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and stars in the distortion of space and time.'
K.
Of every 200 atoms in your body, 126 are hydrogen, 51 are oxygen, 19 are carbon, 3 are nitrogen, and the remaining 1 is mixed.
L.
Matter could pop into existence from nothing at all- "provided it disappears again with sufficient haste."- Alan Lightman
M.
Tiny marine organisms like coccoliths, foraminiferans, and such, capture atmospheric CO2 in rain and make shells. This takes it out of the atmosphere. IF THE ECOSYSTEM IN THE SEA IS DESTROYED, CO2 WILL BUILD UP IN THE ATMOSPHERE EVEN FASTER THAN IT IS NOW. The sea is being destroyed.
N.
We have better maps of Mars than we do of our own sea beds.
O.
For every pound of shrimp harvested, approximately four pounds of fish & other marine creatures are destroyed.
P.
The 'Trieste' descended to the bottom of the oceans deepest trench, the Mariana Trench, at 35,802 feet or almost 7 miles.
Q.
Humans are the most common large species, followed by crab-eater seals.
R.
Using the Miller-Urey experiment (combining gases and electricity to attempt to show that life can be made from non-living things), altered to what we think the atmosphere was really like back then, has resulted in one amino acid. We can't make protein, because the chances of them spontaneously arranging are zero. The chances of spontaneously making a typical small protein are on in 10^260; more than all the atoms in the known universe.
S.
Long ago, cyanobacteria evolved and 'invented' photosynthesis. They began releasing oxygen, a product of photosynthesis; at first, instead of accumulating in the atmosphere, it combined with iron to form ferric oxides, which sank to the bottom of primitive seas. "FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, THE EARTH LITERALLY RUSTED ... a phenomenon vividly recorded in the banded iron deposits that provide so much of the world's iron ore today.
T.
Only one bone in a billion becomes fossilized. 270 million Americans will only leave 50 bones, considering that each of them has 206 bones apiece, only a quarter of a skeleton.
U.
"FAMILIARITY, YOU KNOW, BREEDS FAMILIARITY."- Charles Fortey
V.
FIVE MAJOR EXTINCTIONS: Ordovician (440 million years ago), Devonian (342), Permian (245), Triassic (210), & Cretaceous (65). The Permian was the largest; 95% of the species died, and this began the age of the dinosaurs.
W.
Humans:
Domain Eukarya
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Chordata
Subphylum Vertebrata
Class Mammalia
Order Primates
Family Hominidae
Genus & Species, Homo sapiens
X.
Lichens, not mosses, prefer the north sides of trees.
Y.
"Descended from apes! My dear, let us hope that is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known." - the wife of the Bishop of Worchester, after hearing of evolution
Z..
'The world was almost ready, but not quite, to begin to understand how we got here, how we made each other.'
-notes from the book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
