Quotes About Cosmos

Look unto the stars to teach us How the master's thoughts can reach us Each one follows Newton's math Silently along its path.

A millionth of a second has passed since the beginning. This tepid universe was no longer hot enough or dense enough to cook quarks, and so they all grabbed dance partners, creating a permanent new family of heavy particles called hadrons (from the Greek hadros, meaning "thick").

The stars of the Milky Way galaxy trace a big, flat circle. With a diameter-to-thickness ratio of one hundred to one, our galaxy is flatter than the flattest flapjacks ever made. In fact, its proportions are better represented by a crepé or a tortilla.

The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brain spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told.

By now, one second of time has passed. The universe has grown to a few light-years across,†† about the distance from the Sun to its closest neighboring stars.

These elements would be stunningly useless were they to remain where they formed. 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.

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.

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

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

The Universe was opaque until 380.000 years after the Big Bang.

When 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, 'cause they're small and the Universe is big, but I feel big because my atoms came from those stars.

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.

life began on Mars and later seeded life on Earth, a process known as panspermia.

Out of ninety-four naturally occurring elements, hydrogen lays claim to more than two-thirds of all atoms in the human body, and more than ninety percent of all atoms in the cosmos, on all scales, right on down to the solar system.

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

Gravity is a marvelous force, but a troubling one.

If you must know, the brightest star in the nighttime sky is Sirius, the Dog Star.

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.

We begin with the stars, then ascend up and away out to the galaxy, the universe, and beyond. What did Buzz Lightyear say in Toy Story? "To Infinity and Beyond!" It's a big universe. I

You can picture the universe as an enormous loaf of raisin bread rising in the oven

however big the world is—in our hearts, our minds, and our outsized digital maps—the universe is even bigger. A depressing thought to some, but a liberating thought to me.

The four most common, chemically active elements in the universe—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen—are the four most common elements of life on Earth, with carbon serving as the foundation of biochemistry. We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us.

We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us. That