Astronomy & Space Quotes

InFront

Lots of other places have them, and I find that astronomers/ physicists often have a very poignant way of putting things:) . Here's some I came across recently which I thought were pretty cool!


"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Douglas Adams


“To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.”
Stephen Hawking


"Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases."
Stephen Hawking


“I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.”
Max Born


"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
Albert Einstein


Anybody know any other good ones?

slade_x

Random Quotes:

No known roof is as beautiful as the skies above."
- Michael O'Muircheartaigh

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
- Albert Einstein

We live in a changing universe, and few things are changing faster than our conception of it.
- Timothy Ferris, "The Whole Shebang"

When the Sun shrinks to a dull red dwarf, it will not be dying. It will just be starting to live and everything that has gone before will merely be a prelude to its real history.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Telescopes are in some ways like time machines. They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past.
We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you're less romantic you can say we're the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine.
We've made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmoc, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.
- Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain

Slade_x, "in the most literal sense we are the stuff that stars are made of":) - aimed at hollywood

The large-scale homogeneity of the universe makes it very difficult to believe that the structure of the universe is determined by anything so peripheral as some complicated molecular structure on a minor planet orbiting a very average star in the outer suburbs of a fairly typical galaxy."
- Steven Hawking

Calculations of the probability of other inhabited planets in our Galaxy are rather meaningless at this stage of our knowledge of the origin of life. But in the framework of the cosmological principle we should assume that there is at least one inhabited planet per galaxy.
- Michael Rowan-Robinson


Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the prospect is staggering!
- Arthur C.Clarke

From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It wasn't a miracle, we just decided to go.
- Jim Lovell,"Apollo 13"

With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress. - Ransom K. Ferm

For I dipped into the Future, far as the human eye could see; saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1842


The earth is simply too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.
- Arthur C. Clarke

But since time slows down aboard the starship, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, the crew could reach the Pleiades star-cluster (M45), which is 400 light-years away, in as little as eleven years, by the clocks aboard the starship. After 25 shipboard years, such a ship could even reach the Great Andromeda Galaxy - although over 2 million years would have passed on the earth.
Wormholes were first introduced to the public over a century ago in a book written by an Oxford mathematician. Perhaps realizing that adults might frown on the idea of multiply connected spaces, he wrote the book under a psuedonym and wrote it for children. His name was Charles Dodgson, his psedonym was Lewis Carroll, and the book was Through The Looking Glass.
- Michio Kaku, "Visions - How science will revolutionize the 21st century"

He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.
- Carl Sagan's epitaph to astronomer Johannes Kepler

Some other Carl Sagan Quotes;

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.:D

Quote From Contact (1997)

"If it is just us..... Its an awful waste of space"

The below is a speech given by Stephen Hawkingwhile accepting the Royal Society's Copley Medal (2006)

"The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star. If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years. This is obviously far too long to be practical, so science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination. Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light. However, we can still within the law, by using matter/antimatter annihilation, at least reach just below the speed of light. With that, it would be possible to reach the next star in about six years, though it wouldn't seem so long for those on board."


The below speech was prepared in case of failure of Apollo Moon Mission for President Nixon

"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown. In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."