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Each component of this trinity of human endeavor--science, religion, and art--lays powerful claim to our feelings of wonder, which derive from an embrace of the mysterious. Where mystery is absent, there can be no wonder.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science. --EDWIN P. HUBBLE (1889-1953), The Nature of Science
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars that exploded more than five billion years ago. We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Consider an adult who tends to the traumas of a child: spilled milk, a broken toy, a scraped knee. As adults we know that kids have no clue of what constitutes a genuine problem, because inexperience greatly limits their childhood perspective. Children do not yet know that the world doesn't revolve around them. As grown-ups, dare we admit to ourselves that we, too, have a collective immaturity of view? Dare we admit that our thoughts and be..
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Collectively, these findings tell us it's conceivable that life began on Mars and later seeded life on Earth, a process known as panspermia.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Dark energy is a mysterious pressure in the vacuum of space that acts in the opposite direction of gravity, forcing the universe to expand faster than it otherwise would.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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The options available to a creative person are ever limited by the choices offered by a philosopher.
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science
philosophy
interesting
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Some 14 billion years ago, at the beginning of time, all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe fit within a pinhead.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.
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science
cosmos
space
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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To declare that Earth must be the only planet in the universe with life would be inexcusably big-headed of us.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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When you are 31 years, 7 months, 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 20 seconds old, you've lived your billionth second.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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I look forward to the day when the solar system becomes our collective backyard--explored not only with robots, but with the mind, body, and soul of our species.
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universe
science
cosmos
space
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Mount Everest is about as tall as a mountain on Earth can grow before the lower rock layers succumb to their own plasticity under the mountain's weight.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Let's get China to leak a memo that says they want to build military bases on Mars. We'd be on Mars in twelve months.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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I learned in biology class that more bacteria live and work in one centimeter of my colon, than the number of people who have ever existed in the world. That kind of information makes you think twice about who-or what-is actually in charge.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Part the curtains of society's racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural conflicts, and you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers. Now imagine a world in which everyone, but especially people with power and influence, holds an expanded view of our place in the cosmos. With that perspective, our problems would shrink--or never arise at all--and we could celebrate our earthly differences while shunning the behavi..
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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When you organize extraordinary missions, you attract people of extraordinary talent who might not have been inspired by or attracted to the goal of saving the world from cancer or hunger or pestilence.
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science
ndt
nasa
space
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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e0557d8
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Throughout history, different cultures have produced creation myths that explain our origins as the result of cosmic forces shaping our destiny. These histories have helped us to ward off feelings of insignificance.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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If all mass has gravity, does all gravity have mass? We don't know.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Science's skeptical core makes it a poor competitor for human hearts and minds, which recoil from its ongoing controversies and prefer the security of seemingly eternal truths. If the scientific approach were just one more interpretation of the cosmos, it would never have amounted to much; but science's big-time success rests on the fact that it works. If you board an aircraft built according to science - with principles that have survived ..
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truth
scientific-approach
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that!" --EDGAR MITCHELL, APOLLO 14 ASTRONAUT, 1974"
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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There's no doubt about it: more varieties of carbon-based molecules exist than all other kinds of molecules combined.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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the only people who should have their head examined are those who never ask questions.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Knowledge of physical laws can, in some cases, give you the confidence to confront surly people. A few years ago I was having a hot-cocoa nightcap at a dessert shop in Pasadena, California. I had ordered it with whipped cream, of course. When it arrived at the table, I saw no trace of the stuff. After I told the waiter that my cocoa was plain, he asserted I couldn't see the whipped cream because it sank to the bottom. Since whipped cream ha..
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Perhaps these ancient observatories perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what's going on in the sky. To us, a simple rock alignment based on cosmic patterns looks like an Einsteinian feat. But a truly mysterious civilization would be one that made no cultural or architectural reference to the sky at all.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Without a doubt, Einstein's greatest blunder was having declared that lambda was his greatest blunder.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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What are the chances that this first and only smart species in the history of life on Earth has enough smarts to completely figure out how the universe works? Chimpanzees are an evolutionary hair's-width from us yet we can agree that no amount of tutelage will ever leave a chimp fluent in trigonometry. Now imagine a species on Earth, or anywhere else, as smart compared with humans as humans are compared with chimpanzees. How much of the uni..
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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The easy part is the ray's 500-second speed-of-light jaunt from the Sun to Earth, through the void of interplanetary space. The hard part is the light's million-year adventure to get from the Sun's center to its surface.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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The most accurate measurements to date reveal dark energy as the most prominent thing in town, currently responsible for 68 percent of all the mass-energy in the universe; dark matter comprises 27 percent, with regular matter comprising a mere 5 percent.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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To picture a pulsar, imagine the mass of the Sun packed into a ball the size of Manhattan. If that's hard to do, then maybe it's easier if you imagine stuffing about a billion elephants into a Chapstick casing.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted aurora near the poles of both Saturn and Jupiter. And on Earth, the aurora borealis and australis (the northern and southern lights) serve as intermittent reminders of how nice it is to have a protective atmosphere.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Even the successful 1985 Bret Easton Ellis book (and 1987 film) Less Than Zero, which tracks the falling from grace of wealthy Los Angeles teens, could not be imagined with the logically equivalent title: Negative.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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WHAT IS NOW PROVED WAS ONCE ONLY IMAGIND --WILLIAM BLAKE
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Stephen Hawking the reputation of being the smartest person alive. Most of us agree.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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In the mid-twentieth century, the subfield of cosmology--not to be confused with cosmetology--didn't have much data. And where data are sparse, competing ideas abound that are clever and wishful. The existence of the CMB was predicted by the Russian-born American physicist George Gamow and colleagues during the 1940s. The foundation of these ideas came from the 1927 work of the Belgian physicist and priest Georges Lemaitre, who is generally..
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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That makes me want to grab people on the street and say, "have you heard this?"
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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You don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean you might, but why?
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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Words that make questions may not be questions at all.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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What is NASA's mission? Is it to beat the russians? Is it to inspire?
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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All I can say is, the universe is in a good shape, it's earth that has all the problems.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |