Quote of the day, mostly related to astronomy.

[messier 111]

"Scientists willing to risk their reputations on higher dimensions soon found themselves ridiculed by the scientific community. Higher-dimensional space became the last refuge for mystics, cranks, and charlatans."

- Michio Kaku, Astrophysicist

[messier 111]

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

- Albert Einstein, Astrophysicist

[messier 111]

"The remarkable feature of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. After the laws of physics, everything else is opinion."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist

[messier 111]

“If an astrophysicist tells you that 'the universe has no obligation to make sense to you' I suggest to walk slowly away for you are the universe.”
― Wald Wassermann

[messier 111]

"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens."

- Anaxagoras, Philosopher

[messier 111]

"The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us—there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, or falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries."

- Carl Sagan, Astronomer

[messier 111]

"Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away, if your car could go straight upwards."

- Sir Fred Hoyle, Astronomer

[messier 111]

"Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space."

- Christa McAuliffe, Teacher and Challenger Astronaut

[messier 111]

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

[messier 111]

“We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

[messier 111]

“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”
― Galileo

[messier 111]

“Two thousand years ago the night sky looked completely different, and so when you get right down to it, the Greek conceptions of star signs as related to birth dates are grossly inaccurate for today's day and age. It's called the Line of Procession: back then the sun didn't set in Taurus, but in Gemini. A September 24 birthday didn't mean you were a Libra, but a Virgo. And there was a thirteenth zodiac constellation, Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer, which rose between Sagittarius and Scorpio for only four days.

The reason it's all off kilter? The earth's axis wobbles. Life isn't nearly as stable as we want it to be.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

[messier 111]

“Dark matter has a gravitation effect on other objects. You can't see it, you can't feel it, but you can watch something being pulled in its direction.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

[messier 111]

“The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons.”
― Edwin Powell Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae

[messier 111]

“In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree.”
― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

[messier 111]

“When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

[messier 111]

“The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

[messier 111]

“There's no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don't think this is merely coincidental. It cries out for another explanation, an explanation that... points to purpose and intelligent design in the cosmos.”
― Guillermo Gonzalez, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery

[messier 111]

“Surely it is a great thing to increase the numerous host of fixed stars previously visible to the unaided vision, adding countless more which have never before been seen, exposing these plainly to the eye in numbers ten times exceeding the old and familiar stars.”
― Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo

[messier 111]

“The others would then fall silent and she would continue about doped gallium arsenide detectors, or the ethanol content of the galactic cloud W-3. The quantity of 200-proof alcohol in this single interstellar cloud was more than enough to maintain the present population of the Earth, if every adult were a dedicated alcoholic, for the age of the solar system. The tamada had appreciated the remark.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact