QQC: The Fittest Brains

Q: Past studies from the University of Illinois found that "just 20 minutes of walking" before a test raised children's test scores, even if the children were otherwise unfit or overweight..."

Q: Is this truly true?

C: Simple question right? Correct. However, it had much more of an inquisitive intention than what it sounds like. I have always wanted to figure out ways in which this situation can be soothed and tamed, which is why this quote stood out to me. Also, I always seem to "blank out" before a test so this suites as to where I stand. I thought at first that perhaps this quote was said to cause an awakening in ones conscious for the lack of exercise, but then I referred back to the quote "the hippocampus and basal gangalia interact in the human brain, structurally and functionally." So I came to the conclusion that this had to be true (and the fact that this is non-fiction text), so I will try this out now.

QQC: The Book of Numbers (Chpt. 0)

Q: "Zero had not been invented-and that was a problem."

Q: If zero wasn't not invented, then how did they make trading work?

C: After continuing with the reading, I was informed that people would make stacks of rocks or sticks to identify how much one owed to another. However, I still found this to much of a hassle to go through; which made me even more curious. This was until 628 A.D., when the mathematician named Brahmagupta went into further investigation. He claimed that zero was 'the result of subtracting a number from itself'. Another thing that caught my attention was the fact that now we see zero as a number that is not complicated for subtraction or addition, but back in the days, no one could ever identify it making it an extraordinary number with an amazing use.

QQC #2

Striking quotes/sections:
"...releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time brighter than all the stars in its galaxy."
"If a supernova explosion happened within five hundred light years of us, we would be goners..."
"...all that distinguishes them from the other stars in the sky is that they occupy a point of space that wasn't filled before."
- I thought that these quotes were a great way of to emphasize how big the universe truly is(said to be). I was also impressed by the amount of destruction a supernova may cause and how far away they are due to the comparison that the second statement states. It's crazy just to think of how far away these supernovas are and the power they have! Some of the questions I came a cross were; Why are they so far away? What stops them from being closer?

QQC #1

I found many striking quotes/sections when reading Chapter 1; here are two of the many.

Striking quotes/sections:
"One notion is that perhaps the singularity was the relic of an earlier collapsed universe-that we're just one of an eternal cycle of the expanding and collapsing universes."
-When reading this section, I was awed by the fact that this theory was actually a reasonable explanation to the questions: What is outside of our universe? And what is outside of what was outside of our universe?(ect.) I'll admit that my brain felt relief from all the thoughts that would continue on and on infinitely.

"Try to imagine someone from a universe of flat surfaces, who had never seen a sphere, being brought to Earth. No matter how far he roamed across the the planet's surface, he would never find an edge. He might eventually return to the spot that he had started..."
- At first, I use to think that the universe never ended because it took too long to get there, an infinite amount of time. However, after reading this, I understood why we would never be able to reach an edge. The analogy was an excellent way for my thoughts to wrap themselves around this concept.


These quotes were eye opening and perhaps reasonable, but I still have one question; What made Earth the 'chosen' planet after the Big Bang?