Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Quark,” however, has a literary and far more imaginative origin. The physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who in 1964 proposed the existence of quarks as the internal constituents of neutrons and protons, and who at the time thought the quark family had only three members, drew the name from a characteristically elusive line in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark!”

Neil deGrasse Tyson in Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

At the rate we are discovering meteorites on Earth whose origin is Mars, we conclude that about a thousand tons of Martian rocks rain down on Earth each year. Perhaps the same amount reaches Earth from the Moon.

Neil deGrasse Tyson in Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

By convention, moons are named for Greek personalities in the life of the Greek counterpart to the Roman god after whom the planet itself was named. The classical gods led complicated social lives, so there is no shortage of characters from which to draw. The lone exception to this rule applies to the moons of Uranus, which are named for assorted protagonists in British lit. Sir William Herschel was the first person to discover a planet beyond those easily visible to the naked eye, and he was ready to name it after the King—always a safe bet when you are his subject. Had Sir William succeeded, the planet list would read: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and George. Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed and the classical name Uranus was adopted some years later. But his original suggestion to name the moons after characters in William Shakespeare’s plays and Alexander Pope’s poems remains the tradition to this day. Among its twenty-seven moons we find Ariel, Cordelia, Desdemona, Juliet, Ophelia, Portia, Puck, Umbriel, and Miranda.

Neil deGrasse Tyson in Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Filling out the entire electromagnetic spectrum, in order of low-energy and low-frequency to high-energy and high-frequency, we have: radio waves, microwaves, infrared, ROYGBIV, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays.

Neil deGrasse Tyson in Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

After all, our galaxy contains more than a hundred billion stars, and the known universe harbors some hundred billion galaxies.

Neil deGrasse Tyson in Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

You will find most (known) dwarf galaxies hanging out near bigger galaxies, in orbit around them like satellites. The two Magellanic Clouds are part of the Milky Way’s dwarf family.

Neil deGrasse Tyson in Astrophysics for People in a Hurry