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Astrophysics Quotes

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Astrophysics Quotes

“In 2002, having spent more than three years in one residence for the first time in my life, I got called for jury duty. I show up on time, ready to serve. When we get to the voir dire, the lawyer says to me, “I see you’re an astrophysicist. What’s that?” I answer, “Astrophysics is the laws of physics, applied to the universe—the Big Bang, black holes, that sort of thing.” Then he asks, “What do you teach at Princeton?” and I say, “I teach a class on the evaluation of evidence and the relative unreliability of eyewitness testimony.” Five minutes later, I’m on the street. A few years later, jury duty again. The judge states that the defendant is charged with possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine. It was found on his body, he was arrested, and he is now on trial. This time, after the Q&A is over, the judge asks us whether there are any questions we’d like to ask the court, and I say, “Yes, Your Honor. Why did you say he was in possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine? That equals 1.7 grams. The ‘thousand’ cancels with the ‘milli-’ and you get 1.7 grams, which is less than the weight of a dime.” Again I’m out on the street.”

ScienceUniverseAstrophysicsJury DutyAstrophysicistEyewitnessVoir Dire
Book:Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier
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“The gravitational waves of the first detection were generated by a collision of black holes in a galaxy 1.3 billion light-years away, and at a time when Earth was teeming with simple, single-celled organisms. While the ripple moved through space in all directions, Earth would, after another 800 million years, evolve complex life, including flowers and dinosaurs and flying creatures, as well as a branch of vertebrates called mammals. Among the mammals, a sub-branch would evolve frontal lobes and complex thought to accompany them. We call them primates. A single branch of these primates would develop a genetic mutation that allowed speech, and that branch—Homo Sapiens—would invent agriculture and civilization and philosophy and art and science. All in the last ten thousand years. Ultimately, one of its twentieth-century scientists would invent relativity out of his head, and predict the existence of gravitational waves. A century later, technology capable of seeing these waves would finally catch up with the prediction, just days before that gravity wave, which had been traveling for 1.3 billion years, washed over Earth and was detected. Yes, Einstein was a badass.”

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Book:Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
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“When I worked in high altitude astronomy, the worst sickness that I experienced was not at the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea Observatory (MKO) in Hawaii, it was at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in Arizona at the much lower altitude of 6,875 feet. Due to my very high altitude experiences, I knew that this strange sickness was not primarily caused by altitude sickness and was most likely Sick Building Syndrome (SBS). After reporting various behavioral problems in all of the staff to the management team, my contract was not renewed, I was unable to legally protect the health and safety of the workers that I was responsible for, troubleshooting of this environmental problem stopped and I left in a sickened state for my next position before I could find the root cause.”

ProblemTeamWorstBuildingStrangeHealthProtectSickResponsibleManagementSafetyWorkersAstronomySicknessAltitudeProblemsMaunaKeaStaffHawaiiSummitHighExperiencesArizonaStateObservatoryCauseAstrophysicsVeryRootAstronomicalPeakWorkedAstronomerNationalSickenedKittContractAstrobiologyAstrosociobiologyLegallyBehavioralSyndromeTroubleshootingSbsKpnoMko
Author:Steven Magee
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“A black hole has all the characteristics of a whirlpool. We just have to look at the similarities to work out how to use them to our advantage. I mean, space isn't exactly a fluid or is it? Maybe we just need to redefine our fluid parameters. We have whirlpools, tornadoes, wirly-gigs that use the same dynamics. Why not black holes? It's worth thinking about.”

LightSpaceQuote Of The DayAnthony T HincksHincksTornadoesAstrophysicsWhirlpoolsBlack HolesOuterspace
Author:Anthony T. Hincks
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“In astrophysics, we care about how matter, motion and energy manifest in objects and phenomenon in the universe. Stars are born. They live out their lives. They die. Some of the ones that die explode. Our sun will not be one of those, but it will die. And it'll take Earth with us. So we make sure we have other destinations in mind when that happens. And I've got it on my calendar.”

MindMatterHappensCareEarthDiesUniverseEnergyStarsBornSunObjectsDestinationPhenomenonManifestCalendarsAstrophysics
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“Anyone who has wrestled knows that it's the hardest thing in the world to do. Anyone who says something else is the hardest thing has never wrestled. That's what I have found. ... You don't wrestle because it's easy, you wrestle because it's hard. I don't do astrophysics because it's easy, I do it because it's hard. And I juxtapose the two in my mind, body, and soul all the time.”

KnowsWorldMindTwoSoulHardBodyFoundEasyHardestHardest ThingMind BodyAstrophysicsFound YouMind Body And Soul
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“Civilization just takes it as a given that the whole world was flooding. Then science came and you had geology and modern astrophysics, and time became well understood going back billions of years. So enlightened religious people, as a necessity, had to shed the magical elements of the Bible. A little known fact is that Thomas Jefferson did just that. There's something called the Jefferson Bible. It's not widely publicized because it sort of conflicts with certain people's ideas of what the founding fathers were.”

PeopleWorldYearsWellsLittlesIdeasWholeFactsCertainFatherGivenReligiousKnownModernCivilizationConflictElementsUnderstoodBillionsWhole WorldEnlightenedShedFoundingGeologyFloodingAstrophysics
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“The most accessible field in science, from the point of view of language, is astrophysics. What do you call spots on the sun? Sunspots. Regions of space you fall into and you don’t come out of? Black holes. Big red stars? Red giants. So I take my fellow scientists to task. He’ll use his word, and if I understand it, I’ll say, “Oh, does that mean da-da-da-de-da?”

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Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“Plainly, such an approach does not exclude other ways of trying to comprehend the world. Someone committed to it (as I am) can consistently believe (as I do) that we learn much more of human interest about how people think and feel and act by reading novels or studying history than from all of naturalistic psychology, and perhaps always will; similarly, the arts may offer appreciation of the heavens to which astrophysics cannot aspire.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWayFeelsTryingBelieveHumansMayDoeArtReadingHeavenInterestNovelStudyPsychologyOffersApproachCommittedAppreciationConsistentlyAspireAstrophysicsReading NovelsStudying History
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up — many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.”

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Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.”

Has BeensStatesPhilosophyScienceInfluenceModernTheoryEssentialsModelsStandardsPressurePhilosophicalDataSteadyPreferenceConsensusObjectivityTributeAstrophysics
Author:Steven Weinberg
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“My favourite fellow of the Royal Society is the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an obscure 18th-century Kent clergyman and a brilliant mathematician who devised a complex equation known as the Bayes theorem, which can be used to work out probability distributions. It had no practical application in his lifetime, but today, thanks to computers, is routinely used in the modelling of climate change, astrophysics and stock-market analysis.”

TodayScienceUsedKnownCenturyComputerFellowsLifetimeClimateComplexesClimate ChangeWork OutBrilliantPracticalsThanksAnalysisApplicationFavouriteMathematicianObscureProbabilityRoyalEquationsDistributionTheorems18th CenturyClergymenAstrophysicsModellingKentReverends
Author:Bill Bryson
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“In whatever you choose to do, do it because it's hard, not because it's easy. Math and physics and astrophysics are hard. For every hard thing you accomplish, fewer other people are out there doing the same thing as you. That's what doing something hard means. And in the limit of this, everyone beats a path to your door because you're the only one around who understands the impossible concept or who solves the unsolvable problem.”

PeopleMeanHardProblemEasyPathImpossibleDoorsLimitsBeatsConceptsAccomplishSolveMathPhysicsYou ChooseFewerHard ThingsAstrophysics
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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“Scientists willing to risk their reputations on higher dimensions soon found themselves ridiculed by the scientific community. Higher-dimensional space became the last refuge for mystics, cranks, and charlatans.”

LastsFoundCommunitySpaceRiskWillingHigherScientistReputationDimensionsRefugeCharlatansCrankAstrophysics
Book:Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension
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“By analyzing data from Greenwich Observatory in the period 1836-1953, John A. Eddy [Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder] and Aram A. Boornazian [mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston] have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century during that time, corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour. And digging deep into historical records, Eddy has found 400-year-old eclipse observations that are consistent with such a shrinkage.”

YearsHas BeensFoundHoursSunRecordsFeetCenturyPeriodsEvidenceHistoricalRateObservationDataConsistentMathematicianBostonHarvardDiggingEclipseAnalyzingCorrespondingAstrophysicsBouldersContractingGreenwichSmithsonianDigging DeepShrinkage
Author:Jonathan Sarfati
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