Bryson Reading Chapter 4-5

"Kelvin wasn’t being willful .it was simply that there was nothing in physics that could explain how a body the size of the sun could burn continuously for more than a few tens of millions of years at most without exhaustion its fuel. Therefore it followed that the sun and it planets were relatively, but inescapably youthful."

I have two questions my first question is that haven't scientist proved that the world has been here for like 4.something billion years, and the sun has had to have been here for the same amount of time.
But I'm confused as to what there trying to convey in the quote above about how the sun couldn't last for tens of millions of years? is it saying there is no pyhsics to explain how the sun is there for tens of millions of years? And also isn't it hard for astronomers to study the sun because there isn't a way for us to efficiently study like go to the sun and calculate different things like we did on the moon?

"Among the questions that attracted interest in that fanatically inquisitive age was one that had puzzled people for a very long tine namely why ancient clamshells and other marine fossils were so often found on mountaintops. How on earth did they get there?"

It was also crazy how the world was once fully covered in water, and they found seashells and different things one would find underwater today on the mountain. showing proof that the water level was once that high up.

For me it is shocking because I begin to wonder where all of that water went once the sea levels began to go down and turn into what we see now as land.

Did that water disappear? If so will the water continue to disappear until there is no water left?

Bryson Reading Chapter 4

“Once he inserted a bodkin-a long needle of the sort used for sewing leather- into his eye socket and rubbed it around “betwixt my eye and bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could” just to see what would happen. What happened miraculously was nothing-at least nothing lasting. “

How is it that you can stick something inside of your eye and it not be hurt or damaged at any extent ? Also how is he "prickly to the point of paranoia" but he could bare to stick a bodkin(needle)in his eye and like not freak out?

I also think that Newton is kind of a freak of course , but I think that its legit how he pretty much answered his own questions and did his own experiences on himself, like he probably one of those hours he was sitting in the bed after waking up he could have been like "Hmm I wonder what would happen to my vison if I stare at the sun? " Then he goes out to get results to his question. It kind of freaks me out but in the same breath its legit.


"He perceived the wavelike nature of earth wakes, conducted much original research into magnetism and gravity and quite extraordinarily envisioned the possibility of black holes two hundred year s before anyone else."

My second question is how can someone prodict the wave pattern of a earthqauke if earthqakes pretty much happen from tetonic plates underground?

Maybe im wrong but back them idk if they had certin technoligoy or even a signifigant way of figuring out things deep down. But then again there was alot of different things discovered way back yander so maybe im just not fully understanding. Once again its also kind of cool to think learn about the founding fathers of alot of useful imformation we use in todays day and age.