Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Short History of Nearly Everything, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science, Discovery, and Mystery
Writing, Wonder, and Inspiration
Progress, Sexism, and Dogma
Existence, Awe, and Survival
Summary
Analysis
Protons, which are unimaginably tiny particles, are one of the foundational building blocks of the universe—about 500,000,000,000 of them could fit in the dot of an “i” printed on a page. In the infancy of a universe, a proton shrinks down to one billionth of its normal size into a space so tiny that the particle looks “enormous” by comparison. This is then packed into about an ounce of matter. Essentially, in the creation of a universe like ours, every particle that exists is compacted into an unfathomably compact space like this. Then, a blinding pulse that causes rapid expansion (or a “Big Bang”) sets the universe into motion—but rather than spreading out to fill empty space, the only space that exists is what the universe creates as it expands. Scientists disagree about when this happened for our universe, though most estimate that it happened about 13.7 billion years ago.
Bryson gives a clue to the vast scope he will cover in the book, ranging from unimaginably tiny particles to the vastness of an entire universe. Part of Bryson’s aim is to show that there is so much ground to cover that it’s practically impossible to know everything about the universe humans live in. Bryson emphasizes that a lot of science is based on speculation—say, about when the universe started—to show that scientists still have many questions to uncover.
Themes
The idea of the Big Bang wasn’t popularized until the 20th century. Two radio astronomers named Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson are setting up a large Bell Labs communications antenna in New Jersey in 1965, but they can’t get rid of this weird background hiss no matter what they try. Unbeknownst to them, a team of scientists led by Robert Dicke at Princeton University are looking for that exact hiss—cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang. After connecting with Dicke, Penzias and Wilson realize what they have found, and they write a paper about their discovery. Dicke also writes a paper about what it means. In the end, Penzias and Wilson (but not Dicke) win the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Bryson explains that many scientific ideas are fairly new—like the idea of the Big Bang. Bryson also emphasizes that situations leading to scientific discoveries are often accidental, meaning there is an active component of luck and timing in the nature of scientific discovery. In addition, scientific recognition doesn’t always align with scientific achievement, and prejudices among scientists (say, in favoring the discovery of a phenomenon over the explanation of it) often interfere with giving credit where credit is due.
Themes
The Big Bang was more like a rapid expansion than an explosion. Robert Guth comes up with this idea, which is known as “inflation theory” after he is inspired by one of Dicke’s lectures at Princeton University. A fraction of a second after the Big Bang, gravity emerges, then other nuclear forces, followed by elementary particles (photos, protons, neutrons, and electrons). What’s more extraordinary is how well it turned out for us: if one component had been slightly different, we wouldn’t be here.
Bryson emphasizes that human existence is contingent on history working out exactly the way it did—the likelihood of everything coming together to form a universe that’s compatible for human life is very, very low, but somehow this did happen. Bryson’s aim is to instill a sense of awe about how lucky we are to be here.
Themes
That’s why some experts think our Big Bang might be one of many such events that occurred many times over. There might have been billions of them beforehand, and there might be many more after. Or, there might be lots of simultaneous universes, each with slightly different features. In that case, finding a universe that can sustain human life (from among many slightly different universes) is more like going into a department store and finding a suit that fits among many others that don’t, as astronomer Martin Rees put it.
Bryson offers another explanation for our existence in which our universe is one of many. Bryson shows that scientists often debate about the correct interpretation of the phenomena they are analyzing and that scientific knowledge is by no means complete. There are many things about which scientists speculate, including how many universes there might be.
Themes
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Bryson asks where he’d be if he tried to cross past the edge of the galaxy. Oddly enough, the answer is: back at his starting point. This is because space curves in a way that’s hard to understand. It’s a bit like thinking the world is flat, circling Earth, and not understanding why one is right back where one started. Bryson also wonders how the universe went from mostly light gases (like hydrogen, helium, and lithium) to compounds like oxygen and carbon, and, more importantly, where “here” is.
Bryson introduces a puzzling question to show that science is intriguing but full of counterintuitive conclusions, and it often seems inaccessible. However, with the right description—say, about Earth being round instead of flat—many things that seem bizarre at first make a lot of sense. This means that science is more accessible than many people might initially assume, even for something as complicated as spacetime theory.
Themes
