Bill Bryson

It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.)

I am delighted that you could make it

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson

the Big Bang represents some sort of transition phase,

where the universe went from a form we can’t understand to one we almost can.

Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang.

It is divided into two hemispheres, each of which is principally concerned with one side of the body, but for reasons unknown the wiring is crossed, so that the right side of the cerebrum controls the left side of the body and vice versa. The two hemispheres are connected by a band of fibers called the corpus callosum (meaning “tough material” or literally “calloused body” in Latin). The brain is wrinkled by deep fissures known as sulci and ridges called gyri, which give it more surface area. The exact pattern of grooves and ridges in brains is distinctive to each individual—as distinctive as your fingerprints—but whether it has anything to do with your intelligence or temperament or anything else that defines you is unknown.