Quotes About Discovery

As a scientist, you must embrace the inconstancy of knowledge.

If aliens ever give us a call, the Chinese will be the first to know.

People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe. What

No experiment ever conducted has ever revealed an object of any form reaching the speed of light.

School is not only a place to learn, but a place to learn how to learn.

Cosmologists have plenty of ego. How could you not when your job is to deduce what brought the universe into existence?

Are we missing some basic pieces of the universe that once were? What part of the cosmic history book has been marked access denied? What remains absent from out theories and equations that ought to be there, leaving us groping for answers we may never find?

Further analysis of the Sun's spectrum revealed the signature of an element that had no known counterpart on Earth. Being of the Sun, the new substance was given a name derived from the Greek word helios ("the Sun"), and was only later discovered in the lab. Thus, helium became the first and only element in the chemist's Periodic Table to be discovered someplace other than Earth.

As we've known from the beginning, dark matter does, indeed, exert gravity, to which ordinary matter responds. But that's it. After all these years, we haven't discovered it doing anything else.

Last I had kept count, there were fifty-six moons among the planets in the solar system. Then I woke up one morning to learn that another dozen had been discovered around Saturn. After that incident, I decided to no longer keep track. All I care about now is whether any of them would be fun places to visit or to study

These philosophically fun ideas usually satisfy nobody. Nonetheless, they remind us that ignorance is the natural state of mind for a research scientist. People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe.

Imagine a world where nations find the search for life in the universe more interesting than the taking of life on Earth.

Nebulium was simply the signature of ordinary oxygen doing extraordinary things.

For generations, Americans have expected something new and better in their lives with every passing day—something that will make life a little more fun to live and a little more enlightening to behold. Exploration accomplishes this naturally. All we need to do is wake up to this fact.

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

There's nothing like the right telescope in the right hands of the right person at the right time for the right price.

So by looking in X-rays, you are seeing aspects of nature which we did not even suspect existed but which are very important in the formation, evolution, and dynamics of the structures in the universe.

Last I had kept count, there were fifty-six moons among the planets in the Solar System. Then I woke up one morning to learn that another dozen had been discovered around Saturn. After that incident, I decided to no longer keep track.

Astrophysics teaches us that we're not the center of the world.

Detecting without seeing was now a scientific reality.

ignorance is the natural state of mind for a research scientist. People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe.

If the universe is anything, it should be fun.

We went to the moon, looking to discover it, and we looked back and we discovered Earth for the first time.

That's like watching Columbus sail out of the harbor.