Helium Book Quotes

Q: Why are the clinical elements of Curium, Helium, and Barium? A: So, if you cannot cure-ium or heal-ium, you are going to bury-um.

Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin’s theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. We’ve repeatedly tested this prediction, and the results overwhelmingly support Darwin. At high speeds, Einstein realized that time slows down, and curmudgeons on the Swedish Nobel committee found this so weird that they refused to give him the Nobel Prize for his relativity theory. At low temperatures, liquid helium can flow upward. At high temperatures, colliding particles change identity; to me, an electron colliding with a positron and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship. On microscopic scales, particles schizophrenically appear in two places at once, leading to the quantum conundrums mentioned above. On astronomically large scales… weirdness strikes again: if you intuitively understand all aspects of black holes [then you] should immediately put down this book and publish your findings before someone scoops you on the Nobel Prize for quantum gravity… [also,] the leading theory for what happened [in the early universe] suggests that space isn’t merely really really big, but actually infinite, containing infinitely many exact copies of you, and even more near-copies living out every possible variant of your life in two different types of parallel universes.

TRACKING GAMES Hold an object in front of the baby. When you’re sure she’s seen it, let it drop out of your hand. At five or six months, most babies won’t follow the object down. But starting at about seven months, they’ll begin to anticipate where things are going to land. When your baby has more or less mastered this skill, add an additional complication: drop a few objects and let her track them down. Then hold a helium balloon in front of her and let it go. She’ll look down and be rather stunned that the balloon never lands. She’ll also give you a priceless look of betrayal—as though you cheated by defying the laws of physics. Let her hold the string of the balloon and experiment. Another great game involves your baby’s newly developed abilities to track moving objects even when they’re out of sight part of the time. Put your baby in a high chair and sit down at a table facing her. Slowly move a toy horizontally in front of her a few times. Then put a cereal box between you and the baby and move the ball along the same trajectory but have it go behind the box for a second or two. Most six-month-olds will look ahead to the other side of the box, anticipating where the ball will emerge. If your baby’s still having fun, try it again, but this time, instead of keeping the ball on the same path, make a 90-degree turn and bring the ball out from the top of the box. You can do the same kind of thing during games of peek-a-boo. Step behind a door so the baby can’t see you. Then open the door a little and poke your head out. Do that in the same place a few times and then higher or lower than where she was expecting to see you. Most babies find this endlessly amusing. Again, if your baby doesn’t respond to some, or any, of these activities, don’t worry. Babies develop at very different rates, and what’s “normal” for your baby may be advanced—or delayed—for your neighbor’s. And keep in mind that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on fancy toys. When my oldest daughter was about this age, one of her favorite toys was a plastic dish-scrubbing pad. And I remember taking her to FAO Schwartz in New York—zillions of fantastic toys everywhere—and thinking that she was going to want to play with everything. But all she wanted to do was play with the price tags. (She’s a teenager now, and I look back at that experience as a warning—she still spends an awful lot of time looking at price tags …) Give the Kid a Break Don’t feel that you have to entertain your baby all the time. Sure it’s fun, but letting her have some time to play by herself is almost as important to her development as playing with her yourself. And don’t worry; letting her play alone—as long as you’re close enough to hear what she’s doing and to respond quickly if she needs you—doesn’t mean you’re being neglectful. Quite the opposite, in fact. By giving her the opportunity to make up her own games or to practice on her own the things she does with you, you’re helping her learn that she’s capable of satisfying at least some of her needs by herself. You’re also helping her build her sense of self-confidence by allowing her to decide for herself what she’ll play with and for how long.

The hydrogen reaction operates most efficiently at the center of a star, where the temperature and pressure are greatest. Eventually, the hydrogen supply becomes depleted in this region, and the star develops a “core” of helium. The hydrogen reaction must then operate in a zone surrounding the core. As the core grows in mass, the hydrogen zone slowly increases in radius. This evolution is slow at first, but proceeds more and more rapidly as time goes on. When about 10% of the star’s mass has gone into the helium core, the star has evolved from the original point “A” on the diagram to the point “B”. By the time the point “C” is reached, the core contains 20% of the mass of the star. The increase in size and luminosity has become noticeable, and the star can now be classified as a subgiant. As more and more helium is added to the core, the outer regions continue to expand and the star follows the evolutionary path to point “D” where approximately 30% of the mass is contained in the core. Now, although the expansion lowers the star’s surface temperature, the increase in size more than compensates for this, and the total radiation therefore increases vastly as the evolution proceeds. When the star arrives at point “E” the diameter has increased by a factor of several hundred, and the luminosity is about 1000 times the original value. The star is now a typical red giant.

Actually, under stellar conditions matter is generally so highly ionized that, as we shall see in greater detail in chapter vii, the uncertainty in the chemical composition s essentially due to the uncertainty in the abundance of the two lightest elements, namely, hydrogen and helium. The abundance of the lightest elements, has then to be considered as a fresh parameter in the discussion. We can thus summarize by saying that our fundamental problem is to seek a theoretical relation of the kind F[L, M, R, abundance of hydrogen and helium] = 0.

The primordial gases accounted for 98 percent of the material in the cloud from which our sun formed (hydrogen made up ca. 72 percent; helium, ca. 27 percent). But many other elements were also present, including carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen (which now account for 1.4 percent of all matter in the universe), and also iron, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, and neon (which account for another 0.5 percent).

The fraction of the mass of two hydrogen atoms that is released as energy when they fuse to produce helium is 0.007 (0.7%). That is the source of the heat produced in the sun and in a hydrogen bomb. It is the amount of mass (m) that is converted to energy (E) in the famous Einstein formula E = mc2, and it is a direct measure of the strong nuclear force. If the strong force had a value of 0.006 or less, the universe would consist only of hydrogen—not very conducive to the complexities of life. If the value were greater than 0.008, all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang, and there could be no stars, no solar heat—again, no life. As Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put it in their book The Grand Design, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.

The fraction of the mass of two hydrogen atoms that is released as energy when they fuse to produce helium is 0.007 (0.7%). That is the source of the heat produced in the sun and in a hydrogen bomb. It is the amount of mass (m) that is converted to energy (E) in the famous Einstein formula E = mc2, and it is a direct measure of the strong nuclear force. If the strong force had a value of 0.006 or less, the universe would consist only of hydrogen—not very conducive to the complexities of life. If the value were greater than 0.008, all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang, and there could be no stars, no solar heat—again, no life. As Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put it in their book The Grand Design, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.

The fraction of the mass of two hydrogen atoms that is released as energy when they fuse to produce helium is 0.007 (0.7%). That is the source of the heat produced in the sun and in a hydrogen bomb. It is the amount of mass (m) that is converted to energy (E) in the famous Einstein formula E = mc2, and it is a direct measure of the strong nuclear force. If the strong force had a value of 0.006 or less, the universe would consist only of hydrogen—not very conducive to the complexities of life. If the value were greater than 0.008, all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang, and there could be no stars, no solar heat—again, no life. As Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put it in their book The Grand Design, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.

On the 14th October 2012 Felix Baumgartner broke the record for freefall distance when he jumped from a helium balloon. He jumped from an altitude of 127,852 feet and fell 119,431 feet before landing in New Mexico. He reached a speed of 843mph.

Your head now feels so light it could float away, like a helium balloon. Focus on your breath. Breathe in deeply, all the way to your belly, breathe out. I want you to remember that you are special, and you can achieve anything you want. You just need to believe in yourself. There is nobody else like you. You don’t need others to approve of you, because you are perfect just the way you are. As you go through today, remember this, and have a day full of happiness and peace. Imagine a bucket is floating near your head, put all your problems and fears into that bucket.” Zali was quiet for a couple of minutes. “Now send that bucket off into the sky and watch your problems float away. The bucket has disappeared into the clouds. Feel that those negative feelings have all left your body. Take a deep breath in, and then blowout hard.