If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Did you know that if the entire history of the Earth were condensed into a single day, humans wouldn't appear until the final moments before midnight?
- Have you ever wondered why you are composed of trillions of atoms that have existed for billions of years, yet they’ve only come together to be 'you' for a brief flash of time?
- Are you curious about the series of improbable accidents and near-extinctions that had to occur just to make your existence possible?
Listen to A Short History of Nearly Everything — Free Audiobook
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Key Takeaways from A Short History of Nearly Everything
- Realize that your existence relies on a delicate, temporary alignment of trillions of lifeless atoms that will sustain you for an average of 650,000 hours.
- Discover how the entire universe and the laws of physics were born from a dimensionless singularity, forming the very first matter in exactly three minutes.
- Understand why our astronomical knowledge is still a drop in the ocean, as space is overwhelmingly vast and scientists can only point their instruments in one direction at a time.
- Learn why every known map of the universe is dramatically out of proportion, since our eventful solar system occupies less than a trillionth of available space.
- Find out how a simple wager about planetary orbits prompted Isaac Newton to write Principia, establishing the fundamental laws of motion and universal gravitation.
Learning Tools
Reinforce what you learned from A Short History of Nearly Everything
Mind Map
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Universe
The Big Bang
Scale & Extraterrestrial Life
Physics & The Cosmos
Classical Mechanics (Newton)
Relativity (Einstein)
Quantum Mechanics (Heisenberg)
Planet Earth
Age of the Earth
Conditions for Life
The Oceans
Existential Dangers
Life & Evolution
Bacteria
Origins of Life
Evolution & DNA
Quiz — Test Your Understanding
Question 1 of 11
How did radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discover evidence of the Big Bang?
A Short History of Nearly Everything — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Big Bang theory says the universe expanded from an extremely dense point, moving outward at truly extraordinary speed.
Chapter 3: The cosmos is so vast, there are likely other beings out there — we just haven’t discovered them yet.
Chapter 4: Isaac Newton concentrated on explaining the motions of the universe and the Earth clearly.
Chapter 5: Rocks and fossils revealed Earth’s antiquity, but radioactivity revealed precisely how old it truly was in years.
Chapter 6: Einstein’s special relativity says that time itself is indeed relative.
Chapter 7: Einstein’s general relativity completely transformed our understanding of gravity’s nature and behavior.
Chapter 8: Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle clarifies how subatomic particles move.
Chapter 9: Four distinct criteria make the existence of life on planet Earth possible.
Chapter 10: of 13
Chapter 11: Bacteria are Earth’s most abundant life forms, and we exist because they enable us to thrive.
Chapter 12: Life began spontaneously as a bundle of genetic material that discovered how to replicate itself successfully.
Chapter 13: Although Earth sustains uncountable species, all life on the planet can be considered one interconnected whole.
Chapter 14: Earth continually faces existential threats arising within the solar system — and from catastrophic forces waiting here on our own planet.
A Short History of Nearly Everything Summary & Overview
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) offers an enlightening summary of contemporary scientific thinking relating to all aspects of life, from the creation of the universe to our relationship with the tiniest of bacteria.
Who Should Listen to A Short History of Nearly Everything?
- Adults who want to brush up on their foundational science knowledge
- People interested in the origin of the universe and life on Earth
- Anyone fascinated by the world’s greatest scientific mind
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