Quotes About Discovery

It is striking that the observational search for extraterrestrial life began in the same generation as the invention of the telescope, and with the greatest theoretician of the age.

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land. —T. H. Huxley

I Ã¢â'¬Â¦ had ambition not only to go farther than anyone had done before," wrote Captain James Cook, the eighteenth-century explorer of the Pacific, "but as far as it was possible for man to go." Two centuries later, Yuri Romanenko, on returning to Earth after what was then the longest space flight in history, said "The Cosmos is a magnet Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Once you've been there, all you can think of is how to get back.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop.

science carries us towards an understanding of how the world is, rather than how we would wish it to be [...]

A still more glorious dawn awaits.

When enough fiction is written and enough scientific hypotheses are proposed, sooner or later there will be accidental concordances.

Until fairly recently it was thought that humans had fortv-eight chromosomes in an ordinary somatic cell. We now know that the correct number is forty-six. Chimps apparently really do have forty-eight chromosomes, and in this case a viable cross of a chimpanzee and a human would in any event be rare.

O método da ciência, por mais enfadonho e ranzinza que pareça, é muito mais importante do que as descobertas dela.

La verdad puede ser confusa o contraria a la intuición. Puede contradecir creencias profundas. Experimentando, llegamos a controlarla.

So in an age when traditional religions have been under withering fire from science, is it not natural to wrap up the old gods and demons in scientific raiment and call them aliens?

The great radio telescopes of the world are constructed in remote locations for the same reason Paul Gauguin sailed to Tahiti: For them to work well, they must be far from civilization.

Kita tidak mempertanyakan apa guna burung berkicau, sebab kicauan adalah kenikmatan mereka sejak mereka diciptakan untuk berkicau. Kita pun semestinya tidak mempertanyakan mengapa manusia bersusah payah menyingkap rahasia langit... Keanekaragaman fenomena alam sungguh luar biasa, harta karun yang tersembunyi di langit bergitu banyak dan tertata dengan sangat baik sehingga akal manusia tidak akan pernah kekurangan nutrisi segar"---Johannes Kepler__ Hal.45

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and said, 'This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed'?

You could say that my scientific career has been a sequence of free associations. One thing just led to another.

She found what she had been searching for.

As the pioneering physicist Benjamin Franklin put it, "In going on with these experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves obliged to destroy?

Una científica compañera mía me contaba un reciente viaje que realizó a la meseta de Nueva Guinea, donde visitó una tribu todavía en la edad de piedra que apenas había tenido contactos con la civilización. Ignoraban lo que son los relojes de pulsera, las bebidas refrescantes y los alimentos congelados. Pero conocían el Apolo 11. Sabían que los humanos han pisado la Luna.

Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species

The fact that atoms are composed of three kinds of elementary particles—protons, neutrons and electrons—is a comparatively recent finding. The neutron was not discovered until 1932. Modern physics and chemistry have reduced the complexity of the sensible world to an astonishing simplicity: three units put together in various patterns make, essentially, everything.

Pero los humanos tenemos talento para engañarnos a nosotros mismos. El escepticismo debe ser un componente de la caja de herramientas del explorador, en otro caso nos perderemos en el camino. El espacio tiene maravillas suficientes sin tener que inventarlas.

La búsqueda de inteligencia extraterrestre —que todos abreviaban con las siglas SETI

As we identify the planets of other stars, as we find other words of roughly the size and mass of Earth, we will scrutinize them for life.

explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival.