No time to read? Get the main key insights from this summary of Frank Wilczek’s Fundamentals in just a short listen.

A few key insights from Chapter 1:

1. There is a common theme that runs through literature, philosophy, and theology that humans are insignificantly small when compared to the vastness of our universe. But when you look at humans, there are approximately 10 octillion atoms inside each of us. In essence, we are extremely vast as well.

2. Global Positioning System (GPS) is able to obtain our location through a combination of tracking its own movement, receiving our phone’s signals, and cross-referencing this data with other global satellites (30 total), each using an atomic clock. All of these steps are based on certain assumptions, making GPS always imperfect.

3. But because GPS has been so successful with obtaining our locations, we know the assumptions and geometry put into it are accurate. Thus, astronomers are able to make similar assumptions with measuring things in space to a fair level of certainty and accuracy.

4. Astronomers, when measuring things extremely far from Earth, use how long a light beam would take to travel to that specific object. For example, it takes light one-fifteenth of a second to travel across Earth. Thus, Earth’s radius is equivalent to one-fifteenth of a light-second.