Great Throughts Treasury

"While I'm a big fan of science fiction, especially as rendered in expensive Hollywood blockbusters, it's the real universe that calls to me."

"While the Copernican principle comes with no guarantees that it will forever guide us to cosmic truths, it's worked quite well so far: not only is Earth not in the center of the solar system, but the solar system is not in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy is not in the center of the universe, and it may come to pass that our universe is just one of many that comprise a multiverse. And in case you're one of those people who thinks that the edge may be a special place, we are not at the edge of anything either."

"Why the ancient civilizations who built the place did not use the easier, nearby rocks remains a mystery. But the skills and knowledge on display at Stonehenge are not. The major phases of construction took a total of a few hundred years. Perhaps the preplanning took another hundred or so. You can build anything in half a millennium - I don't care how far you choose to drag your bricks. Furthermore, the astronomy embodied in Stonehenge is not fundamentally deeper than what can be discovered with a stick in the ground. Perhaps these ancient observatories perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what's going on in the sky. To us, a simple rock alignment based on cosmic patterns looks like an Einsteinian feat. But a truly mysterious civilization would be one that made no cultural or architectural reference to the sky at all."

"Whether or not people go into space or serve the space industry, they will have the sensitivity to those fields necessary to stimulate unending innovation in the technological fields, and it's that innovation in the 21st century that will drive tomorrow's economies."

"Where there's water on Earth, you find life as we know it. So if you find water somewhere else, it becomes a remarkable draw to look closer to see if life of any kind is there, even if it's bacterial, which would be extraordinary for the field of biology."

"Whether or not you can never become great at something, you can always become better at it. Don't ever forget that! And don?t say I?ll never be good. You can become better! and one day you?ll wake up and you?ll find out how good you actually became."

"With regard to robots, in the early days of robots people said, 'Oh, let's build a robot' and what's the first thought? You make a robot look like a human and do human things. That's so 1950s. We are so past that."

"With automatic spell checkers running unleashed over what we compose, our era is that of correctly spelled typos."

"Within one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) than all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world."

"Would a NASA reality show ?Lunar Shore? be more popular than ?Jersey Shore?? Civilization?s future depends on that answer."

"Without physics there?d be no Fashion Channel ? there?d be no TV. But w/o fashion, physicists might just be naked. Not good."

"Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it?s, what are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?... Well, I?m still worried even about a healthy balance. Yeah, if you are distracted by your questions so that you cannot move forward, you are not being a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world. And so the scientist knows when the question what is the sound of one hand clapping? is a pointless delay in our progress."

"Yes, not only humans but also every other organism in the cosmos, as well as the planets or moons on which they thrive, would not exist but for the wreckage of spent stars. So you?re made of detritus. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"

"Without a doubt, the most spectacular way to die in space is to fall into a black hole."

"Words that make questions may not be questions at all."

"Yes, the universe had a beginning. Yes, the universe continues to evolve. And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnace within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out ? and we have only just begun."

"You can?t just choose what is true and what isn?t."

"You cannot spontaneously levitate and hover above the ground, whether or not you are seated in the lotus position. Although, in principle, you could perform this stunt if you managed to let loose a powerful and sustained exhaust of flatulence."

"You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office."

"You can't come away with this cosmic perspective thinking that you are better than others and want to fight. That's why you'll never have astrophysicists leading nations into war."

"You can't train kids in a world where adults have no concept of what science literacy is. The adults are gonna squash the creativity that would manifest itself, because they're clueless about what it and why it matters. But science can always benefit from the more brains there are that are thinking about it - but that's true for any field."

"You could also ask who?s in charge. Lots of people think, well, we?re humans; we?re the most intelligent and accomplished species; we?re in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That?s what?s going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook."

"You have not fully expressed your power as a voter until you have scientific literacy in topics that matter for future political issues."

"You have people who believe they are scientifically literate but, in fact, are not. And I don't mind if you're not scientifically literate, but just admit that to yourself, so that you'll know, and perhaps you can take a first step to try to eradicate that."

"You don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean you might, but why?"

"You know that passage in the Bible that says, ?And the meek shall inherit the Earth?? Always wondered if that was mistranslated. Perhaps it actually says, ?And the geek shall inherit the Earth.?"

"You will never find scientists leading armies into battle. You just won't. Especially not astrophysicists - we see the biggest picture there is. We understand how small we are in the cosmos. We understand how fragile and temporary our existence is here on Earth."

"You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say."