Quotes About Cosmos

The power and beauty of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them.

It is the destiny of stars to collapse.

Yes, not only humans but also every other organism in the cosmos, as well as the planets or moons on which they thrive, would not exist but for the wreckage of spent stars. So you're made of detritus. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?

To make this journey, we'll need imagination but imagination alone is not enough because the reality of nature is far more wondrous than anything we can imagine. This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiment and observation. Build on those ideas that pass the test, reject the ones that fail, follow the evidence where ever it leads and question everything. Accept these terms and the cosmos is yours...

Without a doubt, the most spectacular way to die in space is to fall into a black hole.

After the 9/11 attacks, when President George W. Bush, in a speech aimed at distinguishing the U.S. from the Muslim fundamentalists, said, Our God is the God who named the stars. The problem is two-thirds of all the stars that have names, have Arabic names. I don't think he knew this. This would confound the point that he was making.

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.

Like the microscopic strands of DNA that predetermine the identity of a macroscopic species and the unique propertires of its members, the modern look and feel of the cosmos was writ in the fabric of its earliest moments, and carried relentlessly through time and space. We feel it when we look up. We feel it when we look down. We feel it when we look within.

The universe has never made one of anything, so why would there even be one of itself?

If one evening you feel sad enough to cry, look up. Your tears will not fall and the starry night may bring joy to your soul.

Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego.

People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. And therein lies a fascinating dichotomy. "The universe always was," gets no respect as a legitimate answer to "What was around before the beginning?" But for many religious people, the answer, "God always was," is the obvious and pleasing answer to "What was around before God?

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.

Most places in the universe will kill life instantly—instantly! People say "Oh, the forces of nature are just right for life." Excuse me. Just look at the volume of the universe where you can't live. You will die instantly.

Collectively, these findings tell us it's conceivable that life began on Mars and later seeded life on Earth, a process known as panspermia.

To declare that Earth must be the only planet in the universe with life would be inexcusably big-headed of us.

We are, each of us, a little Universe

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.

If you ask people where they're from, they will typically say the name of the city where they were born, or perhaps the place on Earth's surface where they spent their formative years. Nothing wrong with that. But an astrochemically richer answer might be, I hail from the explosive jetsam of a multitude of high-mass stars that died more than 5 billion years ago.

What we know is that the matter we have come to love in the universe—the stuff of stars, planets, and life—is only a light frosting on the cosmic cake, modest buoys afloat in a vast cosmic ocean of something that looks like nothing.

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.

Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say that the universe has empowered us, here in our small corner of the cosmos, to figure itself out. And we have only just begun.

In the beginning, nearly 14 billion years ago, all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe was contained in a volume less than one-trillionth the size of the period that ends this sentence.

There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on any beach, more stars than seconds have passed since Earth formed, more stars than words and sounds ever uttered by all the humans who ever lived.