Quotes About Comets

surmised that pressure from sunlight creates these tails by blowing dust and ice crystals in comets away from the sun. The prescient Jules Verne anticipated light sails in From the Earth to the Moon when he wrote, "There will some day appear velocities far greater than these, of which light or electricity will probably be the mechanical agent … we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars.

Of all the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets in our Solar System, there is fire only on Earth—because there are large amounts of oxygen gas, O2, only on Earth. Fire was, much later, to have profound consequences for life and intelligence. One thing leads to another.

One consequence of this train of argument is that, even if civilizations commonly arise on planets throughout the Galaxy, few of them will be both long-lived and nontechnological. Since hazards from asteroids and comets must apply to inhabited planets all over the Galaxy, if there are such, intelligent beings everywhere will have to unify their home worlds politically, leave their planets, and move small nearby worlds around. Their eventual choice, as ours, is spaceflight or extinction.

Comets are the icy heralds from a bygone epoch. When the Solar System was forming these icy leftovers brought water to the inner planets. Now they are merely ghostly messengers who write their stories in dust; each statement costs the comet dearly.

Small bodies in our solar system, like comets and asteroids, help us understand how the solar system formed and provide opportunities to advance exploration.

The motions of the comets are exceedingly regular, and they observe the same laws as the motions of the planets, but they differ from the motions of vortices in every particular and are often contrary to them.

Reason can go only to a certain extent, beyond that it cannot reach. The circle within which it runs is very very limited indeed. Yet at the same time, we find facts rush into this circle. Like the coming of comets certain things come into this circle; it is certain they come from outside the limit, although our reason cannot go beyond.

Time, tide, and comets waited for no man.

we are what meteors, comets, sunspots are to astronomers: monstrous deviations, fell portents of undesired change, proof that something is wrong in a system that was supposedly framed by the hand of God.

The hasty shake-and-bake nature of the Ymir expedition, which had stirred up so much controversy, had been forced by the implacable timeline of celestial mechanics. Time, tide, and comets waited for no man.

Asteroids are craggy chunks of rock. Comets are balls of dirt, ice, and frozen gases. And meteors are, quite simply, whatever falls through and burns up in Earth's atmosphere from outer space. Asteroids

The first trillionaire will be the person who exploits space resources on asteroids, on comets...

Astronomers think much of Earth's oceans could have been formed by comets striking our planet and depositing their water on Earth's surface.

The neon signs which hang over our cities and outshine the natural light of the night with their own are comets presaging the natural disaster of society, its frozen death.

She placed her faith in God, not in superstitions about comets.

People have discovered asteroids in the Main Belt that outgas like comets, and things on cometary orbits that no longer outgas - that don't have tails. We're finding all of these unique cases.

In the beginning always was nothing. The novae exploding silently. In total darkness. The stars, the passing comets. Everything at best of alleged being. Black fires. Like the fires of hell. Silence. Nothingness. Night. Black Suns herding the planets through a universe where the concept of space was meaningless for want of any end to it. For want of any concept to stand it against.

I would have raillery raise the fancy, and quicken the imagination: the fire of its wit should only enable us to trace its original, and shine as the stars do, but not burn. Yet, after all, I cannot greatly approve of raillery, or cease to think it dangerous; and, to pursue my comparisons, said she, with an enchanting smile, persons who possess the true talent of raillery are like comets; they are seldom seen, and are at once admired and feared.

It was a patient business, talking comets down to the speed of life.

All the other stars keep to their courses, and go along just like trains on their rails, but comets can go absolutely anywhere; they pop up here and there wherever you least expect them." "Like me," said Snufkin, laughing. "They must be sky-tramps!" Moomintroll looked disapprovingly at him. "It's nothing to laugh at," he said. "It would be a terrible thing if a comet hit the earth.

When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want.

I've often thought that a planet without water would be a dull, sad place. Most, if not all, water on this planet came from countless small comets thumping against the atmosphere (which continues at about ten thousand comets or pieces of comets per day, enough to add a twenty-five-foot depth of water across the entire globe every half a million years). That it comes from space suggests why it is so peculiar and fascinating here on earth. It is a substance from far beyond our reach.

I remember for that one moment, I believe I was hitch hiking on one of those comets, falling so fast that I'd surely burn away before I ever hit the ground.