Quotes About Universe

he divides metaphysics into three parts – rational psychology, concerning the nature of the soul; cosmology, concerning the nature of the universe and our status within it; and theology, concerning the existence of God.

It would be nice if there were some one thing constant and unchanging in the universe. If there is such a thing, then it is a thing which would have to be stronger than love, and it is a thing which I do not know.

Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that

The entire universe is a revelation, said the monk. All things change, yet all things remain. Day follows night... each day is different, yet each is day. Much of the world is illusion, yet the forms of that illusion follow a pattern which is a part of divine reality.

positing infinity, the rest is easy

It's hard to imagine a more extraordinary claim than that some hidden intelligence created a universe of more than a hundred billion galaxies, each containing more than a hundred billion stars, and then waited more than 13.7 billion years until a planet in a remote corner of a single galaxy evolved an atmosphere sufficiently oxygenated to support life, only to then reveal his existence to an assortment of violent tribal groups before disappearing again.

Their mutual gravitational attraction will ultimately cause them to collapse inward, in manifest disagreement with an apparently static universe.

To argue that, in a universe in which there seems to be no purpose, our existence is without meaning or value is unparalleled solipsism, as it suggests that without us the universe is worthless. The greatest gift that science can give us is to allow us to overcome our need to be the center of existence even as we learn to appreciate the wonder of the accident we are privileged to witness.

Particle physicists are way ahead of cosmologists. Cosmology has produced one totally mysterious quantity: the energy of empty space, about which we understand virtually nothing. However, particle physics has not understood many more quantities for far longer!

If the universe doesn't care about us and if we're an accident in a remote corner of the universe, in some sense it makes us more precious. The meaning in our lives is provided by us; we provide our own meaning.

Our modern conception of the universe is so foreign to what even scientists generally believed a mere century ago that it is a tribute to the power of the scientific method and the creativity and persistence of humans who want to understand it.

For most people, the central questions of existence ultimately come down to transcendental ones: Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here? Whatever presumptions one might bring to the question Why?, if we understand the how better, why will come into sharper focus.

Andromeda was discovered to be another island universe, another spiral galaxy almost identical to our own, and one of the more than 100 billion other galaxies that, we now know, exist in our observable universe.

And, just as with inflation, as described in the last chapter, our observable universe is at the threshold of expanding faster than the speed of light.

But plausibility itself, in my view, is a tremendous step forward as we continue to marshal the courage to live meaningful lives in a universe that likely came into existence, and may fade out of existence, without purpose, and certainly without us at its center.

The universe has a much greater imagination than we do, which is why the real story of the universe is far more interesting than any of the fairy tales we have invented to describe it.

As Einstein might have put it, only a very malicious (and, therefore, in his mind unimaginable) God would have conspired to have created a universe that so unambiguously points to a Big Bang origin without its having occurred.

Finally, and inevitably, the flat universe will further flatten into a nothingness that mirrors its beginning. Not only will there be no cosmologists to look out on the universe, there will be nothing for them to see even if they could. Nothing at all. Not even atoms. Nothing. If you think that's bleak and cheerless, too bad. Reality doesn't owe us comfort.

Indeed, in a strange coincidence, we are living in the only era in the history of the universe when the presence of the dark energy permeating empty space is likely to be detectable. It is true that this era is several hundred billion years long, but in an eternally expanding universe it represents the mere blink of a cosmic eye.

We need to live our experience as it is and with our eyes open. The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not.

Defining away the question by arguing that the buck stops with God may seem to obviate the issue of infinite regression, but here I invoke my mantra: The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent of our desires. A world without God or purpose may seem harsh or pointless, but that alone doesn't require God to actually exist.

see also positrons; virtual particles Aristotle, 172–73 Atkins, Peter, 191 baryons, 76 Big Bang, xvii, 95, 107, 150, 173, 189 CMBR left from, see cosmic microwave background radiation dating of, 3, 15–16, 77, 87 density of protons and neutrons in

Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here?

T]he declaration of a First Cause still leaves open the question, Who created the creator? After all, what is the difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one?