Chapter 10 chapter eight

is an absolutely extraordinary book.It has been edited and re-edited many times, over many years, and by many different editors.It contains the painstaking efforts of countless rovers and researchers. The foreword to the book begins: "Space," it reads, "is immensity. It is indeed immensity. You won't believe how staggeringly large it is. I mean, you might think that the path to becoming an alchemist It's far away, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to space. Listen..." and stuff like that. (The style of the book settles shortly after the beginning, and begins to tell you what you really need to know. Beth Ramin, for example, is currently worried about the gradual erosion caused by tens of billions of tourists every year. , whose concerns reached such an extent that it was stipulated that the net difference between what you ingested and what you excreted while on the planet had to be surgically removed from your body weight when leaving the planet: so every time you go to the toilet Don't forget to ask for a receipt.)

For the sake of comprehension, the book takes a more efficient approach than the preface when it comes to dealing with the enormous distances between the planets.Sometimes it asks you to imagine a situation like this: A peanut is in Cape Town, England, a walnut is in Johannesburg, and other bewildering concepts like this. The simple fact is that the distances between the stars are far beyond human imagination. Even light—which moves so fast it took thousands of years for most races to recognize its motion—takes time to travel between the stars.It takes 8 minutes for light to travel from the human sun to the space that was once the earth, and it takes 4 years to reach the nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri.

It takes even longer for light to reach the other side of the galaxy, say to Damon Glenn: a full half million years. The record for fastest hitchhiking over this distance is 5 years, but traveling at such a speed, you can't see much on the road. It is said that if you inhale a lung full of air, you can survive in the absolute vacuum of space for about 30 seconds.It doesn't go on to say, however, that in such a vast expanse of space, the probability of you being rescued by another ship within those 30 seconds is 2 to the 276,709 power to 1. An incredible coincidence, 276, 709 happened to be the telephone number of an apartment in Islington where Arthur had once been to a very good party.He meets a really nice girl at a party, but he doesn't get to make out with her much - she gets snapped up by a party breaker.

Although the Earth, this apartment in Islington, and this telephone number are now all gone, it is encouraging that they are all meagerly commemorated by the fact that, 29 seconds later, Ford and Arthur rescued.