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
In the mid-20th century, a British scientist named C. T. R. Wilson is trying to build an artificial cloud formation machine and discovers that subatomic particles leave visible trails in the cloud chamber—meaning he’s just accidentally invented the particle detector. Using Wilson’s model, physicists start building increasingly advanced and expensive particle colliders, though a number of efforts are halted midway by the U.S. Congress pulling funding. Physicists begin to discover a host of subatomic particles, including the building blocks for atomic particles, the building blocks for those, and so on. These discoveries prompt Carl Sagan to speculate that electrons might themselves contain an infinite regress of mini-universes full of galaxies of subatomic particles.
Wilson’s inadvertent discovery enables scientists to more accurately monitor the behavior of subatomic particles. Once again, access to greater information exposes how little humans actually know about the world. Each time we discover a subatomic particle, we also discover even smaller particles that it’s made of, implying that there might be countless layers of more and more minute particles that humans may never get to the bottom of. Sagan’s speculation shows that there are things humans will likely never know about the world at this scale.
Themes
In the 1960s, American physicist Murray Gell-Man attempts to render the 150 or so known subatomic particles a bit more comprehensible. Gell-Man hypothesizes that all atomic particles are made of “quarks,” which are divided into six categories and three colors. Gell-Man’s system prompts the development of the “Standard Model” of sub-atomic particles and forces needed to build protons, neutrons, and electrons. Finding the Standard Model too unwieldy, physicists develop “superstring theory” to help simplify the picture. Superstring theory postulates that subatomic particles are actually strings that oscillate in 11 dimensions—the three that humans know, plus time and seven others that we don’t know. Hypothesizing multiple dimensions helps physicists bring together quantum and gravitational laws into one picture.
The scientific picture gets increasingly unwieldy as particle physicists discover more and more subatomic particles. Gell-Man’s project emphasizes that there is a need for new discoveries to be articulated or expressed with clarity in order for science to keep progressing in a decipherable way. This is especially true when science gets as complicated as it is for particle physicists. The development of superstring theory unfurls even more potential realms of existence that humans may never know about, including dimensions that we can’t access.
Themes
Bryson thinks that efforts to simplify particle physics cause more problems than solutions, as superstring theory formulates convoluted descriptions of the universe. “M Theory,” superstring theory with membrane-like surfaces added, is similarly obtuse. For Bryson, physics has reached the point of becoming indecipherable because it’s nearly impossible to discriminate between genius and hoax theories—even among physicists. Matters in astronomy become similarly unwieldy. Hubble formulates an equation for estimating the universe’s age, but it yields an answer of two billion years, which is problematically younger than the Earth’s true age. Astronomers also discover that “standard candles” are more variable than anticipated. Additional challenges include the costly nature of telescope use (especially for distant objects), the difficulty of assessing distance from light readings, and a scarcity of evidence.
When there are many unknown variables, scientists are forced to speculate and posit hypothetical entities (such as superstrings with membranes). Bryson warns against science lapsing into a space that’s so hypothetical that it fails to connect with reality in a meaningful way. In such cases, Bryson believes that scientists should be extra careful about the way they describe or express things in order to help keep the scientific endeavor on track and stop it from lapsing into absurdity. This is especially the case for areas in which scientific knowledge is so limited that theorizing becomes a matter of pure speculation.
Themes
Physicists also question the universe’s size. One recent theory suggests that distant images telescopes capture are illusions—reflections of closer objects. Also, physicsts can also only account for a fraction of the universe’s matter, meaning most of it is held together by dark matter, which is invisible to humans. Debates also abound among WIMPs (who factor in invisible particles from the Big Gang) and MACHOs (who factor in black holes), others who factor in dark energy as well as dark matter, and others still who factor in subatomic particles that appear and disappear in infinitesimal components of a second. Bryson notes that when it comes to the universe, the most we know is how little we actually know.
Bryson stresses that humans know very little about the universe by discussing phenomena in space that we have little to no grasp on—such as dark matter, which permeates everything but is undetectable by humans. Whether scientists scale up (to the universe at large) or scale down (to the tiniest particles that exist), the picture is increasingly complex and mysterious. All of this implies that the harder and closer scientists look, the more they realize that there is so much that humans don’t know and may never know.
Themes
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