Book SummaryA Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson recounts that one day, while traveling and watching the world go by through an airplane window, he realized that he knew very little about the natural world. As a child, he had found science books confusing and inaccessible. So, to remedy his ignorance, he researched and wrote A Short History of Nearly Everything as an accessible guide to science and natural history, from the big bang to the arrival of hominids on Earth.

If Bryson’s exposition of the natural sciences can be distilled down to a single thesis, it’s that science is not cut-and-dry: Although science has made many important discoveries, there are still things that scientists don’t know or can’t agree on.

Bryson develops this theme both by highlighting a number of the unsolved mysteries that exist in the sciences, and by exploring the...

A Short History of Nearly Everything Summary The History of the Universe

Let’s begin our discussion of A Short History of Nearly Everything at the beginning of everything—the matter, energy, stars, and planets that make up our universe. We’ll consider Bryson’s exposition of the origin of these things, as well as some of the unsolved mysteries of cosmology that he relates.

The Big Bang

According to Bryson, scientists don’t know exactly how or when the universe began. Estimates of its age vary from 10 to 20 billion years, with the most common figure being 13.7 billion years. What they do know—or at least generally agree on—is that the universe started out very small and dense and expanded rapidly from this point of origin. This is known as the Big Bang Theory.

Bryson explains that the big bang was the beginning of space, time, and the elementary particles that make up matter and energy. Space itself expands outward from the point of origin, like the expanding surface of an inflating balloon. Like space, time itself began with the big bang, so, by definition, nothing happened before that.

Theoretical Basis of the Big Bang

Physicist Stephen Hawking discusses the theoretical basis for the Big Bang Theory in more detail in _[A Brief...

A Short History of Nearly Everything Summary The History of Planet Earth

Now that we’ve discussed the origins of the universe, the solar system, and planet Earth, let’s consider Bryson’s exposition of Earth’s geologic history, its structure, and some of the natural forces that have shaped Earth’s surface.

The Age of the Earth

We said earlier that the Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago. But how do scientists know that? Bryson explains that scientists didn’t know how old the Earth was until the mid-1900s, when lead-uranium radiometric dating was developed.

Uranium undergoes radioactive decay, eventually turning into non-radioactive lead. But if the rock is melted, the lead separates from the uranium. So, by knowing the decay rate of uranium, you can calculate how long it’s been since a uranium-bearing rock solidified by measuring the ratio of lead to uranium in the rock.

However, most of the rocks on Earth cooled more recently than the Earth itself because, as we’ll discuss, plate tectonics tends to cycle rocks between Earth’s crust and its molten interior. Thus, to determine the age of the Earth, scientists actually resorted to dating meteorites, operating under the assumption that all the objects in our solar system formed at about...

A Short History of Nearly Everything Summary The History of Life on Earth

Earth’s geologic history is intertwined with its biologic history since, as we’ve discussed, geologists often make use of fossils to infer information about Earth’s past climate and continental structure. Now we’ll turn our attention to what biologists can infer about the history of life on Earth, from the appearance of the first life to the appearance of modern man.

The Origin of Life

According to Bryson, the origin of life is still one of the great mysteries of science. Scientists thought they were close to solving it in the 1950s when Stanley Miller succeeded in synthesizing amino acids by passing an electrical current through a mixture of gaseous chemicals. Amino acids combine to make proteins, which in turn make up the tissues of living organisms. However, more recent discoveries indicate that the chemicals Miller used were probably not present in the atmosphere of the early Earth, so it’s hard to say how the first amino acids on Earth were produced.

And after the amino acids were produced, it’s a bit of a mystery how they were first assembled into proteins. Molecules like amino acids do naturally polymerize (bond together into long chains or other structures) to...

Shortform Exercise: Uncover Disagreement on a Recent Scientific Discovery

In this exercise, you’ll pick a recent scientific discovery and examine the different perspectives on and explanations for it.

Think of a recent scientific discovery that you’ve read about in the news, or peruse a science website or journal to learn about a new scientific event or discovery. Briefly describe it here.