Galactic Trivia

 I found myself in my library looking into the non fiction tomes and few caught my eye.

My favorite read for good chuckles is anything Bryson pens and indeed something I had not read was Bill Bryson's 'African Diary'.  A travelogue of his trip to Kenya which I will write in a later blog.

A travel book of galactic proportion also by Bryson is titled - Short History of Nearly Everything, where he takes his readers on a journey to learn about us humans to our place on the planet to the planet itself and beyond.

The other writings I found were from Carl Sagan - the sage astronomer, author who has several noteworthy books on the space we inhabit.

This one was titled 'Billions and Billions' and is in reference to a remark he never made but other shows and celebrities attributed it to him so he caved and wrote a book with that title.  It is a reference to the ubiquity of the stars in the known universe and as a math major he says the title is non descriptive. It should be specific.

Suffice to say that the numbers get really crazy when you start measuring objects in the sky. Some trivia I learned from reading above mentioned books -

Pluto - the last planet (sort of) in our solar system was named for Percival Lowell  (the first two letters of his name are an homage) who believed there to be a ninth planet but never found it.  I remember visiting the observatory near Phoenix, AZ in our travels that he funded and founded.

Clyde Tombaugh later actually discovered the planet.  And its five moons.

Pluto is only about 700 miles across and is the smallest of our brethren to drive around the sun.

That Indians and Iranians among others (Greek and Romans) were some really smart dudes (and some dudettes too although books do not reference many).

They had figured out solar systems and galaxies before we had glass based telescopes.  They invented the numerals so we can count.

Just by looking up.  For night after night.  That must have been some chill time back then.  Without Facebook no one knew what the dude on an island in Greece (it was not even called that back then) was looking and booking.

They wrote on papyrus and drew on rocks.

That the Iranians invented a game of 64 squares with carved objects depicting a theater of war.  We know it as Chess. The end game is Shah Met or Defeat of the King today transcribed as Check Mate.