Cosmos: Chapters 10–13

All we need do is procure a sample of, say, Phobos or a comet and examine its magnesium isotopes.

Tendrils of vast gossamer gas clouds formed, colonies of great lumbering, slowly spinning things, steadily brightening, each a kind of beast eventually to contain a hundred billion shining points.

Within the nascent galaxies, much smaller clouds were also experiencing gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions were initiated, and the first stars turned on.

Supernova explosions of massive early stars produced successive overlapping shock waves in the adjacent gas, compressing the intergalactic medium and accelerating the generation of clusters of galaxies.

Supernova shock waves may have contributed to accretions of matter at every scale.

Some clusters have their galaxies arranged in an unambiguously spherical geometry; they are composed chiefly of ellipticals, often dominated by one giant elliptical, the presumptive galactic cannibal.

A direct impact on one galaxy by another can send the constituent stars pouring and careening through intergalactic space, a galaxy wasted.

Billions of light-years away are still more tumultuous objects, the quasars, which may be the colossal explosions of young galaxies, the mightiest events in the history of the universe since the Big Bang itself.

In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course ask next where God comes from.

That which was clear and light drifted up to become heaven, while that which was heavy and turbid solidified to become earth.

Some scientists think that when expansion is followed by contraction, when the spectra of distant galaxies are all blue-shifted, causality will be inverted and effects will precede causes.

When the cosmic inventory is completed, and the mass of all the galaxies, quasars, black holes, intergalactic hydrogen, gravitational waves and still more exotic denizens of space is summed up, we will know what kind of universe we inhabit.

Exasperated at being judged a psychological aberration, the apple descends into Flatland.

We understand this cube to cast a shadow, which we usually draw as two squares with their vertices connected.

There is an idea—strange, haunting, evocative—one of the most exquisite conjectures in science or religion.

But we seek the dominant intelligences, the grandest creatures on the planet, the sentient and graceful masters of the deep ocean, the great whales.

Eating an apple is an immensely complicated process. In fact, if I had to synthesize my own enzymes, if I consciously had to remember and direct all the chemical steps required to get energy out of food, I would probably starve.

And finally, on the outside, living in uneasy truce with the more primitive brains beneath, is the cerebral cortex, which evolved millions of years ago in our primate ancestors.

Cuneiform writing, the remote ancestor of the Western alphabet, was invented in the Near East about 5,000 years ago.

Happenstance may play a powerful role in biology, as it does in history.

It is not much good to be supremely adapted to life in the trees if there are very few trees. Many arboreal primates must have vanished with the forests.

The mindless contents of commercial television and the integuments of international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal messages about life on Earth that we choose to broadcast to the Cosmos.

Because of erosion on the Earth, our monuments and artifacts will not, in the natural course of things, survive to the distant future.

As an adult, Champollion succeeded; fulfilling his childhood ambition, he provided a brilliant decipherment of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Those engaged in the development and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction are given salaries, perquisites of power and, where possible, public honors at the highest levels available in their respective societies.

It was a slab from an ancient temple, displaying what seemed clearly to be the same message in three different writings: in hieroglyphics at the top, in a kind of cursive hieroglyphic called demotic in the middle, and, the key to the enterprise, in Greek at the bottom.

But consider the alternative, the prospect that at least some civilizations learn to live with high technology; that the contradictions posed by the vagaries of past brain evolution are consciously resolved and do not lead to self-destruction; or that, even if major disturbances do occur, they are reversed in the subsequent billions of years of biological evolution.

Benevolent encounters have not been the rule in human history, where transcultural contacts have been direct and physical, quite different from the receipt of a radio signal, a contact as light as a kiss.

On any planet, no matter what its biology or social system, an exponential increase in population will swallow every resource.

But the most likely case is that interstellar communication will be a kind of palimpsest, like the palimpsests of ancient writers short of papyrus or stone who superimposed their messages on top of preexisting messages.

A great radioactive cloud was deposited on the tiny atoll of Rongalap, 150 kilometers away, where the inhabitants likened the explosion to the Sun rising in the West.

In a full nuclear exchange, in the paroxysm of thermonuclear war, the equivalent of a million Hiroshima bombs would be dropped all over the world.

We have ameliorated on a planetary scale injustices that only recently were global and endemic.

What is often called the strategy of nuclear deterrence is remarkable for its reliance on the behavior of our nonhuman ancestors.

Each side continually explores the limits of the other’s tolerance, as in flights of nuclear bombers over the Arctic wastes; the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars—a few entries from a long and dolorous list.

With Richardson’s curve and the simplest extrapolation for the future growth of the human population, the two curves do not intersect until the thirtieth century or so, and Doomsday is deferred.

In laboratory experiments, Harry and Margaret Harlow found that monkeys raised in cages and physically isolated—even though they could see, hear and smell their simian fellows—developed a range of morose, withdrawn, self-destructive and otherwise abnormal characteristics.

Where physical affection is encouraged, theft, organized religion and invidious displays of wealth are inconspicuous

where infants are physically punished, there tends to be slavery, frequent killing, torturing and mutilation of enemies, a devotion to the inferiority of women, and a belief in one or more supernatural beings who intervene in daily life.

The old exhortations to nationalist fervor and jingoist pride have begun to lose their appeal.