English

Byron Rasmussen

15 July, 23:40

Astronomers these days can do the most amazing things. If someone struck a match on the Moon, they could spot the flare. From the tiniest throbs and wobbles of distant stars they can infer the size and character and even potential habitability of planets much too remote to be seen-planets so distant that it would take us half a million years in a spaceship to get there. With their radio telescopes they can capture wisps of radiation so preposterously faint that the total amount of energy collected from outside the solar system by all of them together since collecting began (in 1951) is "less than the energy of a single snowflake striking the ground," in the words of Carl Sagan. Source: Bryson, Bill. "Welcome to the Solar System." A Short History of Nearly Everything. New York: Broadway, 2003. 19. Print. What is the author's main purpose in this excerpt?