Wonderful Factoids

1. If you condense the history of the universe to a single year, humans would appear on December 31st at 10:30 PM—99.98 percent of the history of the universe happened before humans even existed.

2. Look at a gold ring. As the core collapsed in a dying star, a gravity wave collapsed inward with it. As it did so, it slammed into the thundering sound wave heading out of the collapse. In that moment, as a star died, the gold in that ring was formed.

3. We are star material that knows it exists.

4. Our planet is spinning at 900 miles an hour beneath our feet while coursing through space at 68,400 miles per hour.

5. The continents are moving under our feet at 3 to 6 inches a year. But a snail’s pace for a million millennia has been enough to remake the face of the world several times over, build the Himalayas, and create the oceans.

6. Through the wonder of DNA, you are literally half your mom and half your dad.

7. A complete blueprint to build you exists in each and every cell of your body.

8. The faster you go, the slower time moves.

9. Your memories, your knowledge, even your identity and sense of self exist entirely in the form of a constantly recomposed electrochemical symphony playing in your head.

10. All life on Earth is directly related by descent. You are a cousin not just of apes, but of the sequoia and the amoeba, of mosses and butterflies and blue whales.

To instill in a child the sense of wonder.