Quotes About Science

Decade by decade: estimates of Pluto's size got smaller and smaller.

The universe today is 13.8 billion years old. By 22 billion years, the Sun will have finished its main-sequence lifetime and will have become a white dwarf. The Andromeda galaxy will have crashed into the Milky Way.

What happened before all this? What happened before the beginning? Astrophysicists have no idea. Or, rather, our most creative ideas have little or no grounding in experimental science. In response, some religious people assert, with a tinge of righteousness, that something must have started it all: a force greater than all others, a source from which everything issues. A prime mover. In the mind of such a person, that something is, of course, God.

To the scientist, the universality of physical laws makes the cosmos a marvelously simple place.

Science is not just about seeing, it's about measuring, preferably with something that's not your own eyes, which are inextricably conjoined with the baggage of your brain.

I claim no special knowledge of when the end of science will come, or where the end might be found, or whether an end exists at all. What I do know is that our species is dumber than we normally admit to ourselves.

In short, were it not for our ability to analyze spectra, we would know next to nothing about what goes on in the universe.

On the equator, where centrifugal forces are greatest, a 150-pound person will be a slender 149 pounds 14 ounces.

people taking the time and energy to ask about what they do not understand - I have renewed hope that society can shed its superstitions and embrace the enlightenment that comes from just a basic understanding of how the universe works.

German physicist Heinrich Hertz had shown that the only real difference among the various kinds of light is the frequency of the waves in each band.

The universe is knowable...

Earth's brightness is less than one-billionth that of the Sun, and our planet's proximity to the Sun would make it extremely hard for anybody to see Earth directly with a visible light telescope.

The universe is knowable and what one need not apeal to mystical, magical forces to account for things

One substantial hunk of junk led to the formation of the Moon. The unexpected scarcity of iron and other higher-mass elements in the Moon, derived from lunar samples returned by Apollo astronauts, indicates that the Moon most likely burst forth from Earth's iron-poor crust and mantle after a glancing collision with a wayward Mars-sized protoplanet.

To other scientists, the scientist who corrects a colleague's error, or cites good reasons for seriously doubting his or her conclusions, performs a noble deed, like a Zen master who boxes the ears of a novice straying from the meditative path, although scientists correct one another more as equals than as master and student.

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

the hottest part of the day on Earth is not at noon, but sometime after noon, because the ground absorbs visible light

Taken together, you get the best indication that water absorbs microwave frequencies.

Gravity is a marvelous force, but a troubling one.

Your body has to come up with about 100 watts of energy to keep yourself warm

Intelligence and longevity do not seem to be correlated.

I don't know how Albert would have felt about this, but an unknown element was discovered in the debris of the first hydrogen bomb test in the Eniwetok atoll in the South Pacific, on November 1, 1952, and was named einsteinium in his honor. I might have named it armageddium instead.

Dark matter is dark; that means it does not interact with photons

Dark matter particles should be passing through your body right now.