Carlos Adrian Ortiz de Montellano Soto

What I really liked was the infinitive numbers that can exist, and how further
we have been discovering them, the difference between millions and billions. But
the distinction between millions and billions is much more vital on such issues as
national budgets, world population, and nuclear war fatalities, and I’m not just
talking about the positive numbers, there are also negative numbers, I got more
impressed about the negative number because during all my studies till now, I
never thought that could exist even less than a micro -6, after this book I learned
that there is more numbers in the universe that anyone can imagine. At night I
always ask myself how many stars exist in the universe?, and then I think that the
answer is never going to be completely precise.

I was a little concern was about exponential numbers, after I read the story
of the Persian Chessboard, and thinking about other consequences in daily life.
Exponentials cant go on forever, because they will double up everything, the
exponential curve flattens out after it will be no more things to double up. This is a
good point of AIDS epidemic. Right now, in many countries the number of people
with AIDS symptoms is growing exponentially. The doubling time is around one
year, that is, every year there are twice as many AIDS cases as there were in the
previous year. AIDS has already taken a tremendous mortality among us. If it were
to continue exponentially, it would be a huge catastrophe. In ten years there would
be a thousand times more AIDS cases, and in 20 years, a million times more. But a
million times the number of people who have already AIDS is much more than the
number of people on Earth, then every human being on Earth would die from
AIDS. This is a truly fact that we should be concern about. Exponentials are also
the central idea behind the world population crisis, population was stable, with
births and deaths almost perfectly in balance. This is called a Steady State or Zero
Population Growth (ZPG).

An example of football or any other game are games that our ancestors start
and not necessarily the same way we play now, what the book says is that all this
games became from hunting practices. Why everything has to be a competition in
life anyway is the cycle of life and those hunters were the ones who taught, and
gave us resourcefulness, modesty, accuracy, consistency, deep knowledge of
animals, teamwork and love of the outdoors. Thanks to those hunters now a days
we are growing really fast because of the competition in the world, that’s why most
of the countries are inventing more technology to succeed. Technology is one of
the topics that I like because of the fast growing of it, we have about 20 years of
experience with new technology we could reach the speed of the sound, but what
we can’t do yet is to reach the speed of light and I think is going to be hard reach
3 X 108 m/s, I think that at the time we could reach the speed of light we will
became more selfish with nature, we will expand our borders and we will forget
about mother nature that is the one that has been feeding us the whole life, a
phrase of the author that let me think more about nature than ourselves is: Nature
does not always conform to our predisposition and preferences, to what we deem
comfortable and easy to understand. This phrase is really important because we
are sharing the world with millions of other species.

I never thought that the sun could reflect a mixture of waves with
frequencies corresponding to all the colors of the rainbow but there is a little more
yellow light than red or blue, which is partly why the sun looks yellow. A question
that I always ask myself is: why does the rose look red? And after read the book I
learned that red is absorbed inside the petal, but blue and yellow waves are
absorbed at each reflection more than red waves.

The chapter that I liked the most is the Four Cosmic Questions. 1. Was
there ever life on Mars? After read this I stopped believing in most of religious
theories that we are the only living organisms living in the whole universe, after
proved material of the planet Mars, that found carbon dioxide, ozone and some
other minerals associated with life on Earth that are gases and minerals that still in
the Earth’s atmosphere, with this proved is more easily to figure out if somehow
was life in it. 3. Is There Intelligent Life Elsewhere? I got impressed of how radio
waves can travel at the speed of light, and with the right frequency they pass
cleanly through interstellar space and through planetary atmospheres, imagine if
we find a signal of extraterrestrial intelligence, then our view of the universe and
ourselves will change forever. Those two questions were the only ones that I found
really interesting and made me think that we are not the only ones in the entire
universe, there are billions of galaxies and some of them are similar to ours. So
now for me, is hard to believe in religious theories, so if my mom demands my
Physics teacher because of that, my teacher should tell her to read this book first.

The world that came in the mail, pretty much what Carl Sagan wanted to say
is that after we start using the mail, we been forgetting everything around us, like
the plants and animals, and everything that was not created by the humans, like I
was saying we share this planet, we don’t own it, this planet was not created only
for us, we have to start doing something to change the peoples mind, but to do that
we have to start with the example of each of us. What I’m saying is that all the
technology now is being a danger instead of a benefit to us; there is a whole in the
atmosphere (Ozone Layer), this is a real problem because if we don’t do anything
to prevent this, like the use of clorofluocarbons (CFC) that are sprays, the gas that
use in air conditioners and fridges.

What I liked in chapter 9 was the story of Creso, king of Lidia, this story is a
good example of how sometimes we don’t really ask things correctly, and we also
want to guess the answer, this cause a wrong perception of what is really
happening.

A part of the sky is missing, this chapter better explains the ozone layer, and
what would happen in the future, the truth is that this fragile layer is the only layer
that protect us against the ultraviolet radiation, the Kyoto protocol is an
International Organization that tries to organize all countries to stop using or
producing CFCs.
 Global Warming is the chapter where Sagan describes the origins of fossil
fuels and how we took advantage of them, he says that petroleum and carbon are
the world’s principal economy; the combustion of carbon with oxygen produces
carbon dioxide that is responsible of the green house effects. He says that there is
equilibrium in the world’s temperature, but if we keep producing carbon dioxide
burning fossil fuels or any other thing we will have serious problems in a closed
future, and now is starting with the melting of the poles. In the next chapter Sagan
tries to give ideas to stop the over production of carbon dioxide and start using
biofuels, solar power, and electricity

I think is a good idea that science and religion make an alliance, if we do

that we will be a majority that thinks in nature like a need and not like a business.

Talking about the abortion if its legal or not, I think every human being has
the freedom to choose between what’s correct and what’s wrong, if a mother
doesn’t want to have the baby because she doesn’t like kids and that’s why she
wants to abort, but the law is against it, poor baby why does he has to suffer when
his mom never wanted him. I think the government doesn’t have to deal with it.

Chapter 16, The Rules of the Game was my favorite chapter, here explains
you how the world treats you, how have you been treating people, and that’s
exactly how they are going to treat you, a lot of important people that became
famous not only for their phrases but also for their good actions have succeed
because of the first three rules, even the people that is mean to other people that
have succeed is because they take advantage of the peoples thoughts, this guys
use the last four rules.

Chapter 17, How far does the technology is going to continue inventing
weapons for the human destruction? This is a question that I would like to answer.
Since World War I the humans found ways to build up more powerful weapons to
kill hundreds of people, World War II the humans found ways to build up more
powerful weapons to kill thousands of people. The end of WWII the human
discovered the power to destroy an entire island. If it would be a third one, it would
be the end of our planet and our specie.

XXth Century became the most important century because the enormous
scientific discoveries in medicine, health, nuclear energy, chemistry, biology,
physics, technology and most of the modern things we have now. The Human
could reach the moon, and more. This century taught us everything we now till
now.

About Sagan’s experiences, I bet was really tough, but what he said about
death was really interesting, death is going to get us some day and we won’t be
able to do something, or finish something, so, what I recommend is live your life
daily, don’t ever try to see the future because you won’t ever see it, but never
forget about the world around you, you are not alone, so try to do your best in
everything, try to help people.