Bill Bryson Chapter Three

Quote: Supernovae occur when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time brighter than all the stars in its galaxy. “It’s like a trillion hydrogen bombs going off at once,” says Evans. If a supernova explosion happened within five hundred light-years of us, we would be goners, according to Evans—“it would wreck the show,” as he cheerfully puts it. Comment: I think this is such a good way to define what the whole chapter was about and personally to me, I see it as everything being a threat to our humanity. I am also fascinated by the many information scientists have discovered about our planet and not only how it could benefit us the people living in planet Earth, but also how some things could potentially completely vanish us forever. Connection: This really ties into the fact that there is a conspiracy going on about the world ending and such absurd things like these. But I think that it just comes to show that scientists actually know what they are talking about based on their discoveries of these new threats in space and around our own atmosphere. We only have them to trust what our future might hold fir us. Questions: What could scientists discover next? Will there ever be a time where the world ends? Will we have slightest clue if it did?