David Christian (1) (1946–)

Gustavo e Clarice se mudaram para Porto Alegre, esperando terminar o ensino médio e fazer, ao mesmo tempo, o cursinho pré-vestibular. No entanto, a aventura na capital gaúcha iria muito além da rotina escolar. Uma outra missão os aguardava: entrar na Ordem dos Centauros para resgatar o Artefato mágico, cujo poder não poderia cair nas mãos inimigas da Ordem dos Minotauros.

Nesta eletrizante jornada em busca do Artefato, os irmãos enfrentarão diversos perigos e terão de provar que, apesar de jovens, serão capazes de salvar a humanidade.… (more)

This review is based on the Blinkist version of the book...thus a summary and my review needs to be qualified as such. Presumably the original full text has much more details and research.....but it also takes much longer to read. If I like the Blinkist version, I might seek out and read the full book. Meantime here are a few nuggets that particularly struck me:
The tale of our origins is told through thresholds–key transition points when more complex things appeared. These moments happen under what’s known as goldilocks conditions–when things are not too hot or too cold, but just right.....We simply don’t know the conditions that allowed our universe to emerge. Perhaps the best way to explain what happened is to use the words of science fiction author Terry Pratchett: “In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.”
To begin with, we only had energy, which quickly split into different forces, such as gravity and electromagnetism. Within a second, simple matter emerged and was followed by more complex structures, while protons and neutrons–extremely tiny particles–teamed up to become nuclei. All this happened within minutes, but as the universe cooled things slowed down a bit. 380,000 years later, electrons became trapped in orbit around protons, pulled together by electromagnetic forces, and the first atoms of helium and hydrogen were formed.
The universe began as something unimaginably small, with all the energy and matter present in the universe today packed into it, and it’s been growing ever since.......stars only came into being a hundred million years after the Big Bang, when gravity and matter provided the goldilocks conditions for stars to form.....When a cloud of matter’s core hits 10 million degrees, trillions of protons will fuse together to form helium nuclei......Actually, we now have many stars, bound together in galaxies. But it’s not just the birth of a star, but also their death that represented an important step forward for our universe, and eventually, for us.......When a large star dies, gravity smashes the star’s core together with extreme force, and the star explodes with, for an instant, as much energy as an entire galaxy. In just a few moments, this explosion manufactures most of the elements we find in the periodic table and sends them flying out into space.
After the star at the center of our solar system–our sun–was formed, a mass of debris made up of gas, dust and particles of ice was left over, while lighter elements such as hydrogen and helium were blasted away by violent bursts from the sun. That’s why the outer planets in our solar system are formed mainly from these elements....The slightly strange tilt of Uranus and its rings is most likely the result of a violent collision with another form, while our moon was probably created by a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet (a kind of early, pre-planet).....In the last 30 years, we’ve learned that most stars have planets. There could be many billions of different kinds of planets in the universe.
What is life? Life is built out of billions of tiny molecular machines working inside protected bubbles, or cells. It can tap into energy, adapt to its environment, reproduce and evolve....In 1953, Stanley Miller, from the University of Chicago, put hydrogen, methane, water and ammonia in a closed system. He heated and electrified.....and under the right circumstances, the basic building blocks of life can emerge. And Earth had those circumstances–the right combination of temperature and chemicals–to allow for the emergence of life. [Still a long way from Miller’s experiment to getting life]
When it’s cold, it rains less. Less rain means that less carbon is stored away. Carbon dioxide levels build up and things get warmer. If it gets too warm, it rains more, which means more carbon is stored away and things cool down again....This self-regulation offers remarkable stability given that the sun’s warmth has been increasing for over four billion years.
Early life-forms, known as prokaryotes, are single-celled organisms [without a nucleus] created in chemically rich volcanic vents on the ocean floor [this is pure speculation and unproven].......The evolutionary innovation of photosynthesis heralded the first energy boom in the history of life. Photosynthesis is the conversion of sunlight into biological energy. Suddenly, energy was almost limitless, and prokaryotes were able to spread and proliferate. Two and a half billion years ago, levels of atmospheric oxygen increased dramatically. Oxygen atoms began to form what we now call the ozone layer –protecting the earth’s surface from solar radiation and enabling algae to start growing on land for the first time.
An “oxygen holocaust” occurred, and the prokaryotes that survived retreated to the deep ocean. Meanwhile, oxygen caused lower temperatures, [really it was the lower levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rather than the oxygen levels] and for a hundred million years, Earth was covered in ice....
Earth’s self-regulation kept things in check while getting a helping hand from eukaryotes [with a nucleus and multiple chromosomes]–new organisms that could suck oxygen out of the air–which helped to raise and stabilize the atmospheric temperature. Eukaryotes were special for another reason: the exhibited sex...with swapping of genetic material. With more variation to play with, evolution suddenly had more options. Suddenly, things were speeding up....Plants, fungi and eventually animals developed and spread from the oceans onto land. The emergence of photosynthesizing plants on land–which consumed vast amounts of carbon dioxide and released oxygen –created the high-oxygen atmosphere that is essentially what we live and breath today.
Gravity isn’t a problem in water, but on land, plants needed to be able to stand up. They required rigid materials and internal plumbing systems to move liquids against gravity through their bodies. In a similar way, animals developed pumps–like our hearts–to circulate nutrients.....Natural selection promoted information processing
The time was up for dinosaurs in a matter of hours when, 66 million years ago, a large asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula, in what is now Mexico. [again, this is speculation, there are people that claim it was the Indian Deccan volcanoes that made the big difference to the world’s atmosphere]......The asteroid generated dust clouds that blocked out the sun, creating a nuclear winter and producing deadly acid rain....Half of all plant and animal species died out.......Why was this good for mammals? Mammals tended to be small, rodent-like creatures, and unlike large dinosaurs, they survived. With dinosaurs gone, they were able to flourish.......In just the last six million years we humans have gone our own way, evolving separately from primates....Early humans have also gradually evolved. Two million years ago, homo erectus learned how to use tools and control fire....But the really spectacular changes came with homo sapiens, just a few hundred thousand years in the past.
Language enabled a complexity and precision of information sharing that proved to be a game-changer because it permitted collective-learning–the accumulation and passing on of knowledge from human to human and generation to generation......Knowledge accumulated through language enabled better use of resources and therefore population growth. 30,000 years ago, there were around 500,000 humans. 10,000 years ago, there were five to six million. That represents a 12-fold increase in population and a 12-fold increase in total human energy consumption.
Now we get to the next innovation, farming, which evolved in response to population pressures......Initially, humans were reluctant farmers.....But necessity led them to persist, and over time, farming started to change human life, resulting in a huge leap forward in humanity’s mastery of energy and resources......For example, while a farmer himself can only generate about 75 watts of energy, a horse can deliver ten times that figure, meaning the horse can plow deeper and carry more goods than a human alone....In what is now modern-day Iraq.....early farmers dug themselves small ditches to use river water, but over time, communities built complex systems of canals,.........As the productivity of farming improved over time, farmers began to generate significant surpluses–more food and goods than they needed for day-to-day survival. Surplus produce from farming meant that there was a surplus of people with time on their hands
Starting around 6,000 years ago, there is evidence of specialized pottery workshops. Potters produced standardized bowls and plates in large quantities, which were sold far and wide. As surpluses grew, specializations increased. 5,000 years ago in Uruk, a city in Mesopotamia, a list of all the standard professions was compiled. The list included kings and courtiers, as well as priests, tax collectors, silver workers and even snake charmers...Rulers built roads to enable trade, like the Royal Road from Persia to the Mediterranean. Built in the fifth century BC, the road was 2,700 km long and could be travelled in just seven days by couriers using a relay system of fresh horses–a huge advance on the walking time of 90 days...
When Sir Isaac Newton developed his theories of gravity in the seventeenth century, he was helped by access to information–such as a comparison of how pendulums swing–in Paris, the Americas, and Africa. Never before had scientists been able to test ideas so widely. This accelerated the learning and development process, leading to another critical discovery: fossil fuel energy. Fossil fuels gave societies far more energy than that provided by farming, and this revolutionized human life again......Coal changed the shape of the world. For instance, England’s steam-powered gunships could suddenly defeat Chinese ships, winning them control of Chinese ports in 1842.
In 1837, with the invention of the telegram, communication was as fast as the speed of light.
Since the Second World War, we’ve experienced the greatest burst of economic growth in history, driven mainly by the exploitation of fossil fuels and technological innovation. This is the dawn of the Anthropocene–the era of humans......Economic growth means the human experience is now completely different to that of our ancestors.
Activities that had dominated human life for centuries–tending to crops, milking cows, or gathering fuel for fires–are now largely absent from our lives. Many of us live in cities that are almost totally shaped by humans rather than the natural environment..The Anthropocene has also brought about some major negatives:...vast inequality,.....Biodiversity is in freefall, with rates of extinction now hundreds of times faster than in the last few million years. Perhaps most worryingly, we’re dramatically disturbing the processes that keep our environment stable by generating huge quantities of carbon dioxide.....The story of humans is in large part a story of acceleration. Things are now happening so fast that our actions over the coming decades will have huge consequences for both us and Earth for thousands of years.
Researchers say that we have already surpassed the boundary for biodiversity and are getting closer to the climate change boundaries. John Stuart Mill suggested, it would be better to reach a state of balance in which “no one desires to be richer.”
Many of the conditions are already here. There is now a clear scientific consensus and understanding of humans’ impact on the planet, reflected in documents like the Paris climate accord.
The key message: At the core of our origin story is a tale of increasing complexity. For billions of years, increasingly complex things, like stars, life, humans, modernity, have emerged out of a universe that is, for the most part, cold, dark space. In the last few hundred years, the pace at which change has occurred has been accelerating rapidly, and today, we live in a society of such great complexity that we have the ability to change the direction of our earth’s future.
My take on this book; From my perspective, I don’t think there is anything there that is new to me....and a few errors or oversimplifications that look like errors. Yes, it does cover a lot of ground but I might have expected a bit more detail on some of the claimed thresholds. Two stars from me.… (more)