Astrophysicists Quotes & Sayings

Until 1930 or thereabout biologists [using microscopes], in the situation of Astronomers and Astrophysicists, were permitted to see the objects of their interest, but not to touch them; the cell was as distant from us, as the stars and galaxies were from them. — Albert Claude

One of the most illustrious astrophysicists in the world had not only reviewed my son's theory but had validated it. That, I can tell you, was a chicken soup moment in a class all its own. — Kristine Barnett

For instance, he would often gate-crash university parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of any astrophysicists he could find till he got thrown out. — Douglas Adams

According to PhD astrophysicists and qualified American science professors, the odds of the more than 2,500 prophecies found in the Bible being fulfilled by chance are 1 with 2,000 zeros after it. According to the mathematical science of probability, if a number has more than 50 zeros after it, the odds of that happening by chance is virtually impossible. This is irrefutable proof that the Bible is inspired by God! — Hugh Ross

Only astrophysicists new about the Internet 20 years ago. Today my cat has a website. — William J. Clinton

One could make a compelling argument that we know more about the universe than the marine biologist knows about the bottom of the ocean or the geologist knows about the center of Earth. Far from an existence as powerless stargazers, modern astrophysicists are armed to the teeth with the tools and techniques of spectroscopy, enabling us all to stay firmly planted on Earth, yet finally touch the stars (without burning our fingers) and claim to know them as never before. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Sometimes love was a tonic. Sometimes it was a weapon. And so often it was nearly impossible to tell the difference — Sarah Ockler

Though poets might prefer a more evocative comparison, astrophysicists liken the sun to a nuclear fusion reactor. — Eric W. Sanderson

Right now there's a commonly-held view among scientists that we know about only four percent of all the matter in the universe. Four percent!"
"So what about the other 96 percent?"
"We astrophysicists call it 'dark matter' and 'dark energy.' Maybe we should just call it ignorance. There's so much that we don't know. It's shocking how little we know. And yet we behave like little gods who think we're in control of everything. Like kids with delusions of grandeur. Isn't that what we've made ourselves into? It's as if we're trying to make ourselves believe that four percent is all there is. That everything else, all that we don't know, doesn't exist. But it does. We know it's there; we just don't understand it. — A.J. Kazinski

NBC is working with a team of astrophysicists to create a new day of the week. — Dave Foley

In my experience lust only ever leads to misery. All that suspicion and jealousy and anguish it unleashes. I don't want those things in my life. — Chrissie Hynde

During the 1970s and 1980s, the popular television soap opera As The World Turns portrayed sunrise during the opening credits and sunset during the closing credits ... The soap-opera sunrise showed the sun moving toward the left as it rose rather than to the right. They obviously had gotten a piece of film showing a sunset and played it in reverse ... Had they called their local astrophysicists, any one of us might have recommended that if they needed to save money, they could have shown the sunset in a mirror before they showed it running backward. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

There are relatively few atheists among neurologists and brain surgeons and astrophysicists, but many among psychologists, sociologists, and historians. The reason seems obvious: the first study divine design, the second study human undesign. — Peter Kreeft

Don't most astrophysicists now predict some "end of the line" - an end to it all? Not just the death of things, but the annihilation of everything. Some great contraction, or collapse. Or, perhaps, some vast dissipation into eternal emptiness. Maybe it's all swallowed up by an immense black hole, which then swallows itself. But, whatever the case, their extinction is inevitable and absolute. So complete as to erase any and all evidence that this reality - this existence - ever took place. So complete that, perhaps, for all intents and purposes, it never really did.
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory. — Hannes Alfven

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. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Imagine you are a machine.

Yes, I know. But imagine you're a different kind of machine, one built from metal and plastic and designed not by blind, haphazard natural selection but by engineers and astrophysicists with their eyes fixed firmly on specific goals. Imagine that your purpose is not to replicate, or even to survive, but to gather information.

I can imagine that easily. It is in fact a much simpler impersonation than the kind I'm usually called on to perform. — Peter Watts

I want to leave, go to some place where I will be really in my own niche, where I will fit in. . . . But my place is nowhere; I am unwanted, de trop. The — Jean-Paul Sartre

Horselover Fat continued his insidious, long decline into misery and illness, the sort of chaos that astrophysicists say is the fate in store for the whole universe. — Philip K. Dick

Today every city, town, or village is affected by it. We have entered the Neon Civilization and become a plastic world.. It goes deeper than its visual manifestations, it affects moral matters; we are engaged, as astrophysicists would say, on a decaying orbit. — Raymond Loewy

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. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The once rather old-fashioned science of paleontology finds itself in a maelstrom of excitement and controversy. Astrophysicists, atmospheric scientists, geochemists, geophysicists, and statisticians are all contributing to the extinction problem. And the general public is taking part through television talk shows, magazine cover stories, newspaper editorials, and even the occasional mention in gossip columns. — David M. Raup

Turning the planet into what astrophysicists called a pocket nova. — Alan Dean Foster

Some astrophysicists have convinced themselves that the fifth significant figure of the fine structure constant has changed over the past ten billion years. — Sheldon L. Glashow

A cosmic mystery of immense proportions, once seemingly on the verge of solution, has deepened and left astronomers and astrophysicists more baffled than ever. The crux ... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing. — William Broad

You will never find people who truly grasp the cosmic perspective such as the entire community of astrophysicists leading nations into battle. No, that doesn't happen. When you have a cosmic perspective, there's this little speck called Earth and you say you're going to do what? You're on this side of a line in the sand and you want to kill people for what? — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Don't see yourself as a product of your parents DNA, but rather as a brand new idea from heaven. — Max Lucado

I want people to know when I'm taking care of them I'll give it all that I've got. — Debi Thomas

Winning the Origins Lottery Nontheistic models adhere to a central premise that humans arose by strictly natural unguided steps from a bacterial life-form that sprang into being 3.8 billion years ago. Famed evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, an advocate for the hypothesis that natural selection and mutations can efficiently generate distinctly different species, nevertheless calculated the probability that humans (or a similarly intelligent species) arose from single-celled organisms as a possibility so small (10-1,000,000) that it might as well be zero (roughly equivalent to the likelihood of winning the California lottery 150,000 consecutive times with the purchase of just one ticket each time).2 He and other evolutionary biologists agree that natural selection and mutations could have yielded any of a virtually infinite number of other outcomes. Astrophysicists Brandon Carter, John Barrow, and Frank Tipler produced an even smaller probability. — Hugh Ross

We need to put love back into the world remind the world that love is important. We're all one. — Michael Jackson

Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical - and maybe even experimental - grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own. — Lisa Randall

How do you study something that cannot possibly get your clothes dirty? How do astrophysicists know anything about either the universe or its contents if all the objects to be studied are light-years away? Fortunately, the light emanating from a star reveals much more to us than its position in the sky or how bright it is. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

A lot of the cosmologists and astrophysicists clearly had been reading science fiction. — Frederik Pohl