“The total now is ‘at least ninety . . .’ ” New Scientist, “Many Moons,” March 17, 2001, p. 39; and Economist, “A Roadmap for Planet-Hunting,” April 8, 2000, p. 87.
“we won’t reach the Oort cloud . . .” Sagan and Druyan, Comet, p. 198.
“probably result in the deaths of all the crew . . .” New Yorker, “Medicine on Mars,” February 14, 2000, p. 39.
“the comets drift in a stately manner . . .” Sagan and Druyan, p. 195.
“The most perfect vacuum ever created . . .” Ball, H2O, p. 15.
“ Our nearest neighbor in the cosmos,” Proxima Centauri . . .” Guth, p. 1; and Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 39.
“The average distance between stars . . .” Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, p. 251.
“If we were randomly inserted . . .” Sagan, p. 52.
CHAPTER 3 THE REVEREND EVANS’S UNIVERSE
“the energy of a hundred billion suns . . .” Ferris, The Whole Shebang, p. 37.
“It’s like a trillion hydrogen bombs . . .” Robert Evans, interview by author, Hazelbrook, Australia, September 2, 2001.
“a chapter on autistic savants . . .” Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars, p. 198.
“an irritating buffoon . . .” Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, p. 164.
“refused to be left alone with him . . .” Ferris, The Whole Shebang, p. 125.
“Zwicky threatened to kill Baade . . .” Overbye, p. 18.
“Atoms would literally be crushed together . . .” Nature, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Neutron Star,” November 7, 2002, p. 31.
“the biggest bang in the universe . . .” Thorne, p. 171.
“hasn’t been verified yet.” Thorne, p. 174.
“one of the most prescient documents . . .” Thorne, p. 174.
“he did not understand the laws of physics . . .” Thorne, p. 174.
“wouldn’t attract serious attention for nearly four decades . . .” Overbye, p. 18.
“Only about 6,000 stars . . .” Harrison, Darkness at Night, p. 3.
“In 1987 Saul Perlmutter . . .” BBC Horizon documentary, “From Here to Infinity,” transcript of program first broadcast February 28, 1999.
“The news of such an event . . .” John Thorstensen, interview by author, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 5, 2001.
“Only half a dozen times . . .” Note from Evans, December 3, 2002.
“cosmologist and controversialist . . .” Nature, “Fred Hoyle (1915-2001),” September 17, 2001, p. 270.
“humans evolved projecting noses . . .” Gribbin and Cherfas, p. 190.
“continually creating new matter as it went.” Rees, p. 75.
“100 million degrees or more . . .” Bodanis, E = mc2, p. 187.
“99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system . . .” Asimov, Atom, p. 294.
“In just 200 million years . . .” Stevens, The Change in the Weather, p. 6.
“Most of the lunar material . . .” New Scientist supplement, “Firebirth,” August 7, 1999, unnumbered page.
“first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly.” Powell, Night Comes to the Cretaceous, p. 38.
“Earth might well have frozen over permanently” Drury, Stepping Stones, p. 144.
