Quotes from Neil deGrasse Tyson

Personally, I am quite comfortable with chemicals, anywhere in the universe. My favorite stars, as well as my best friends, are all made of them.

Not only that, this "negative gravity" will ultimately win the tug-of-war, as it forces the cosmic expansion to accelerate exponentially into the future.

Nebulium was simply the signature of ordinary oxygen doing extraordinary things.

At $7.5 million, this represents ten minutes of military spending, out of their $400§ billion annual budget.

For generations, Americans have expected something new and better in their lives with every passing day—something that will make life a little more fun to live and a little more enlightening to behold. Exploration accomplishes this naturally. All we need to do is wake up to this fact.

with the weak force controlling radioactive decay, the strong force binding the atomic nucleus, the electromagnetic force binding molecules, and gravity binding bulk matter.

twenty-four astronauts hail from the swing state of Ohio—more than from any other state—including John Glenn (America's first to orbit Earth) and Neil Armstrong (the world's first to walk on the Moon).

But what if the universe was always there, in a state or condition we have yet to identify—a multiverse, for instance, that continually births universes? Or what if the universe just popped into existence from nothing? Or what if everything we know and love were just a computer simulation rendered for entertainment by a superintelligent alien species?

But high-mass stars fortuitously explode, scattering their chemically enriched guts throughout the galaxy. After nine billion years of such enrichment, in an undistinguished part of the universe (the outskirts of the Virgo Supercluster) in an undistinguished galaxy (the Milky Way) in an undistinguished region (the Orion Arm), an undistinguished star (the Sun) was born.

Indeed, the very word "galaxy" derives from the Greek galaxias, "milky.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

At this point, the particles came in two types, called quarks—which rhymes with marks—and leptons. Quarks are quirky beasts. You'll never catch a quark all by itself; it will always be clutching others nearby. I'm sure you have at least one friend or classmate who behaves similarly. Quarks are like those kids who never want to do anything alone, not even walk to the restroom.

Since everything warmer than absolute zero radiates heat, detecting infrared at a distance means, in principle, detecting everything.

When you explore the same basic information—the same data—from many different perspectives, especially when you compare one risk that you accept to another that you reject, the relevant details shine brightly while the irrelevant details melt away. These are the beginnings of an enlightened, scientifically literate perspective.

Noise" includes any unwanted signal that contaminates the target of measurement.

Swiss-American astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky.

For all we know, the aliens may have tried to get in touch centuries ago and have concluded that there is no intelligent life on Earth. They would now be looking elsewhere. A more humbling possibility is that aliens did become aware of the technologically proficient species that now inhabits Earth, and drew the same conclusion.

Among the many spots used by philosophers and astronomers over the centuries to mark the meridian for zero degrees longitude were Ferro, in the Canary Islands; Ujjain, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh; the "agonic line" (a line along which true north and magnetic north coincide, but not forever) that passed through the Azores; the Paris Observatory; the Royal Observatory at Greenwich; the White House; and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Believe it or not, Santa's reindeer exemplify the problem. Unlike other deer species, both male and female reindeer grow antlers. So at a glance they all look the same. But zoologically all male reindeer lose their antlers in the late fall, well before Christmas.9 In spite of their names, only some of which are feminine,10 all Santa's reindeer sport antlers. So they're all female. Which means Rudolph has been misgendered.

helium became the first and only element in the chemist's Periodic Table to be discovered someplace other than Earth. Okay

It's all you have when you realize you are not entirely in control of outcomes. But without it, how else do we cope with the challenges of life?

going through a wormhole or (as we shall see) by going around a cosmic string.

The former pair offered physics and logic; the latter offered primarily politics and fear plus a

There's nothing like the right telescope in the right hands of the right person at the right time for the right price.