Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil DeGrasse Tyson  ## Metadata - Author: **Neil DeGrasse Tyson** - Full Title: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Category: #books ## Highlights - The world has persisted many a long year, having once been set going in the appropriate motions. From these everything else follows. LUCRETIUS, C. 50 BC ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jvtzcm32s7edqerqrz99my6q)) - What happened before all this? What happened before the beginning? Astrophysicists have no idea. Or, rather, our most creative ideas have little or no grounding in experimental science. In response, some religious people assert, with a tinge of righteousness, that something must have started it all: a force greater than all others, a source from which everything issues. A prime mover. In the mind of such a person, that something is, of course, God. But what if the universe was always there, in a state or condition we have yet to identify—a multiverse, for instance, that continually births universes? Or what if the universe just popped into existence from nothing? Or what if everything we know and love were just a computer simulation rendered for entertainment by a superintelligent alien species? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jvv0a32vsz122h7n4z1yg1j7)) - Planetary atmospheres are rich with such features. And if a planet is teeming with flora and fauna, its atmosphere will be rich with biomarkers—spectral evidence of life. Whether biogenic (produced by any or all life-forms), anthropogenic (produced by the widespread species Homo sapiens), or technogenic (produced only by technology), such rampant evidence will be hard to conceal. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jvxnaxns97vxzwyhgn95qb8p)) - Our search for life in the universe drives the search for exoplanets, some of which resemble Earth—not in detail, of course, but in overall properties. Latest estimates, extrapolating from the current catalogs, suggests as many as forty billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way alone. Those are the planets our descendants might want to visit someday, by choice, if not by necessity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jvxnmngkqrr5wyj1bch2n1y0))