Nuclei Quotes & Sayings

The strongest interactions are the nuclear interactions, which include the forces that bind nuclei together and the interaction between the nuclei and the z mesons. It also includes the interactions that give rise to the observed strange-particle production. — Chen-Ning Yang

Like all numinous contents, they have a tendency to self-amplification, that is to say they form the nuclei for an aggregation of synonyms. These — C. G. Jung

Given the opportunity, under the right conditions, two cells from wildly different sources, a yeast cell, say, and a chicken erythrocyte, will touch, fuse, and the two nuclei will then fuse as well, and the new hybrid cell will now divide into monstrous progeny. Naked cells, lacking self-respect, do not seem to have any sense of self. — Lewis Thomas

The research included neutron resonance spectroscopy, the angular distribution of pion elastic and inelastic scattering on nuclei with optical model fitting. — James Rainwater

if the Big Bang had been one-part-in-a-million more powerful, it would have rushed out too fast for the galaxies and life to develop. If the strong nuclear force were decreased 2 percent, atomic nuclei wouldn't hold together, and plain-vanilla hydrogen would be the only kind of atom in the universe. If the gravitational force were decreased by a hair, stars (including the Sun) would not ignite. — Robert Lanza

I was interested in nuclei originally with my deuteron photo work because that was one of the fundamental forces, and the measurement was basic to new science. — John Henry Carver

The force that played havoc with the cortisol in my blood was the same force that helped my body recover; if I felt better one day and worse the next, it was unchanged. It chose no side. It gave the girl next to me in the hospital pneumonia; it also gave her white blood cells that would resist the infection. And the atoms in those cells, and the nuclei in those atoms, the same bits of carbon that were being spun into new planets in some corner of space without a name. My insignificance had become unspeakably beautiful to me. That unified force was a god too massive, too inhuman, to resist with the atheism in which I had been brought up. I became a zealot without a religion. — G. Willow Wilson

The hypothesis of molecular vortices is defined to be that which assumes - that each atom of matter consists of a nucleus or central point enveloped by an elastic atmosphere, which is retained in its position by attractive forces, and that the elasticity due to heat arises from the centrifugal force of those atmospheres revolving or oscillating about their nuclei or central points.According to this hypothesis, quantity of heat is the vis viva of the molecular revolutions or oscillations. — William John Macquorn Rankine

In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. Then comes the alchemist Mind who transmutes the symbols. The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose - and, alas, suffering and evil. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

Direction coupling between the various radiations generated in a nuclear reaction both with one another and with the initiating radiation can also be detected and measured by coincidences; this provides valuable information about the structure of the atomic nuclei. — Walther Bothe

For it is not cell nuclei, not even individual chromosomes, but certain parts of certain chromosomes from certain cells that must be isolated and collected in enormous quantities for analysis; that would be the precondition for placing the chemist in such a position as would allow him to analyse [the hereditary material] more minutely than [can] the morphologists ... For the morphology of the nucleus has reference at the very least to the gearing of the clock, but at best the chemistry of the nucleus refers only to the metal from which the gears are formed. — Theodor Boveri

No doubt, the flakes of snow falling over him carried ashen nuclei. John tried to concentrate on those tiny flecks of carbon at the center of each snowflake. He tried to think of their elemental futures. Perhaps a hundred thousand years from now they would become tiny diamonds. — Ginn Hale

O. Hahn and F. Strassmann have discovered a new type of nuclear reaction, the splitting into two smaller nuclei of the nuclei of uranium and thorium under neutron bombardment. Thus they demonstrated the production of nuclei of barium, lanthanum, strontium, yttrium, and, more recently, of xenon and caesium. It can be shown by simple considerations that this type of nuclear reaction may be described in an essentially classical way like the fission of a liquid drop, and that the fission products must fly apart with kinetic energies of the order of hundred million electron-volts each. — Lise Meitner

Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts
census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway. — Thomas Pynchon

The most gifted of [the Proletariate], who might possibly become a nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought Police and eliminated. — George Orwell

Once again the mastermind was Lionel Curtis, and the earlier Round Table Groups and Institutes of International Affairs were used as nuclei for the new network. — Carroll Quigley

We carry stores of DNA in our nuclei that may have come in, at one time or another, from the fusion of ancestral cells and the linking of ancestral organisms in symbiosis. Our genomes are catalogues of instructions from all kinds of sources in nature, filed for all kinds of contingencies. — Lewis Thomas

The success of the therapy relies on three main factors: the appropriate selection of patients, the accurate placement of the DBS lead in the sensorimotor regions of the target nuclei, and optimal choice of electrical parameters for stimulation. — William J. Marks Jr.

It is noteworthy, however, that this areas also contains neurons which when stimulated can trigger female sexual posturing (Benson, 1988; Rose, 1990); i.e. the lordosis (or "doggie") position. These latter neurons are interconnected with the amygdala and ventromedial hypothalamus--nuclei — R. Joseph

Within six months of starting my Ph.D. work in 1956, I had already obtained feeding tadpoles derived from transplanted nuclei of embryonic cells. — John Gurdon

a .22 shell is used to fire stainless-steel projectiles dipped in a DNA solution at a stem or leaf of the target plant. If all goes well, some of the DNA will pierce the wall of some of the cells' nuclei and elbow its way into the double helix: a bully breaking into a line dance. If the new DNA happens to land in the right place - and no one yet knows what, or where, that place is - the plant grown from that cell will express the new gene. That's it? That's it. — Michael Pollan

When a child comes in, I believe that it's a 'multipersonhood,' and it knows it, its consciousness knows it, and it has a nuclei in the center of its consciousness that is the repository of all experience and all knowledge. And when you look in the eyes of your baby and you feel this sense that they are an old soul, I believe indeed they are. — Shirley Maclaine

Scientists are like atomic nuclei. They are more easily split than fused ... — Charles Osgood

The Lurking Fear:
Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined condors of purple fulgurous sky ... formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous over-nourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion ... insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and demon arcades choked with fungous vegetation ... Heaven be thanked for the instinct which led me unconscious to places where men dwell; to the peaceful village that slept under the calm stars of clearing skies. — H.P. Lovecraft

Deep in the world of atomic nuclei, life is not always tranquil. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

All integral laws of spectral lines and of atomic theory spring originally from the quantum theory. It is the mysterious organon on which Nature plays her music of the spectra, and according to the rhythm of which she regulates the structure of the atoms and nuclei. — Arnold Sommerfeld

Funny thing about Gabby: you wouldn't know it from looking at him, with his golden halo and platonic beauty, but the guy was something of a pack rat. He'd been collecting little odds and ends since at least the double-digit redshifts. The interior reality of Gabriel's Magisterium burbled and shifted like convection currents in a star on the zaftig end of the main sequence. Because, I realized, that's what they were. Dull dim light, from IR to X-ray, oozed past me like the wax in a million-mile lava lamp while carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen nuclei did little do-si-dos about my toes. Every bubble, every sizzle, every new nucleus, every photodissociation tagged something of interest to Gabriel. The heart of this star smelled of roses and musty libraries. — Ian Tregillis

Connection between life and radioactive nuclei is straightforward. No life without tectonic activity, without volcanic activity. And we know very well that geothermal energy is mostly produced by decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium. — Garik Israelian

[The fine structure constant] ... defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. Its value controls the power from the Sun and, more sensitively, how stars transmute hydrogen into all the atoms of the periodic table. — Martin J. Rees

Our star, and most stars, are made mostly of hydrogen, which is the number one element in the universe: 90% of all atomic nuclei are hydrogen, about 8% are helium, and the remaining 2% comprise all the other elements in the periodic table. All — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The discovery of the neutron was a crucial step in understanding nuclei, including radioactive ones. For example, beta decays are the transformation within a nucleus of a nucleon of one type, either a proton or a neutron, to the other. You may wonder how a proton can decay to a neutron if the neutron is heavier than the proton; conservation of energy would seem to make this impossible. However, while a proton not bound in a nucleus cannot transform to a neutron, it is possible in some circumstances for a proton within a nucleus to do so. This is because the proton can use the additional energy from the force that binds nucleons in the nucleus. Beta decay occurs if it results in the total energy of the final atom, taking into account the energy due to binding, being lower that that of the initial atom. The same applies to a neutron bound in a nucleus, whereas a free neutron can always decay to a proton. — Brian R. Martin

The first thing to say about Eve is that she was a big improvement on the Adam design, or that Adam was an extremely misguided variation on the Eve design. (Consider testicles. Two concentrated nuclei of absolute vulnerability. Where? Dangling between the legs. I rest my case.) — Glen Duncan

The Spirit of Place [does not] exert its full influence upon a newcomer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America ... The moment the last nuclei of Red [Indian] life break up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon of the continent. — D.H. Lawrence

Four elements, Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, also provide an example of the astonishing togetherness of our universe. They make up the "organic" molecules that constitute living organisms on a planet, and the nuclei of these same elements interact to generate the light of its star. Then the organisms on the planet come to depend wholly on that starlight, as they must if life is to persist. So it is that all life on the Earth runs on sunlight. [Referring to photosynthesis] — George Wald

My first attempts to transplant nuclei in Xenopus were completely unsuccessful, because the Xenopus egg, unlike those of other amphibians, is surrounded by an extremely elastic membrane and jelly layer that make penetration by a micropipette impossible. — John Gurdon

Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp. — Douglas Adams

With all reserve we advance the view that a supernova represents the transition of an ordinary star into a neutron star consisting mainly of neutrons. Such a star may possess a very small radius and an extremely high density. As neutrons can be packed much more closely than ordinary nuclei and electrons, the gravitational packing energy in a cold neutron star may become very large, and under certain conditions may far exceed the ordinary nuclear packing fractions ... — Fritz Zwicky

Over the last century, physicists have used light quanta, electrons, alpha particles, X-rays, gamma-rays, protons, neutrons and exotic sub-nuclear particles for this purpose [scattering experiments]. Much important information about the target atoms or nuclei or their assemblage has been obtained in this way. In witness of this importance one can point to the unusual concentration of scattering enthusiasts among earlier Nobel Laureate physicists. One could say that physicists just love to perform or interpret scattering experiments. — Clifford Shull

If the strong nuclear force were slightly weaker, multi-proton nuclei would not hold together. Hydrogen would be the only element in the universe. — Hugh Ross

feel an emotion it is necessary but not sufficient that neural signals from viscera, from muscles and joints, and from neurotransmitter nuclei - all of which are activated during the process of emotion - reach certain subcortical nuclei and the cerebral cortex. Endocrine and other chemical signals also reach the central nervous system via the bloodstream among other routes. — Antonio R. Damasio

My mitochondria comprise a very large proportion of me. I cannot do the calculation, but I suppose there is almost as much of them in sheer dry bulk as there is the rest of me. Looked at in this way, I could be taken for a very large, motile colony of respiring bacteria, operating a complex system of nuclei, microtubules, and neurons for the pleasure and sustenance of their families, and running, at the moment, a typewriter. — Lewis Thomas

There are a vast number of stars within our galaxy. The number is not so large as the number of cometary nuclei around the Sun but is nevertheless hardly modest. It's about 400 billion stars, of which the Sun is one. — Carl Sagan

Today alpha equals 1/137.0359 or so. Regardless, its value makes the periodic table possible. It allows atoms to exist and also allows them to react with sufficient vigor to form compounds, since electrons neither roam too freely from their nuclei nor cling too closely. This just-right balance has led many scientists to conclude that the universe couldn't have hit upon its fine structure constant by accident. — Sam Kean

Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion. — Alexander Calder

Reagents are regarded as acting by virtue of a constitutional affinity either for electrons or for nuclei ... the terms electrophilic (electron-seeking) and nucleophilic (nucleus-seeking) are suggested ... and the organic molecule, in the activation necessary for reaction, is therefore required to develop at the seat of attack either a high or low electron density as the case may be. — Christopher Kelk Ingold

As the cosmos continues to cool - dropping below a hundred million degrees - protons fuse with protons as well as with neutrons, forming atomic nuclei and hatching a universe in which ninety percent of these nuclei are hydrogen and ten percent are helium, along with trace amounts of deuterium ("heavy" hydrogen), tritium (even heavier hydrogen), and lithium. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

There are endless planes of attention, endless realities and endless mind states. They're like collections of atoms and protons and neutrons, nuclei. They just go on forever. They're plasma, they're fluid ... they're alive. — Frederick Lenz

Jane remembers those years, though, as if they had been [a movie]
in part because her friends ... always talked about everything as if it was over ("Remember last night?"), while holding out the possibility that whatever happened could be rerun. Neil didn't have that sense of things. He thought people shouldn't romanticize ordinary life. "Our struggles, our little struggles," he would whisper, in bed, at night. Sometimes he or she would click on some of the flashlights and consider the ceiling, with the radiant swirls around the bright nuclei, the shadows like opened oysters glistening in brine. (In the '80s, the champagne was always waiting.) — Ann Beattie

This means that for most values of the parameters, black holes, if they form at all, do not form by the collapse of stars. From this we can draw the conclusion that the rate at which black holes form is strongly dependent on the parameters. A universe such as ours makes as many as 1018 black holes. A universe roughly like ours, but without atomic nuclei or stars, would make many fewer. But, as we discussed in that chapter, the range of parameters for which atomic nuclei, and hence stars, exist is rather small. From this we may conclude that there are small ranges of parameters for which a universe will produce many more black holes than for other values. Now, I reach into the collection and pick out a universe out at random. It is easy to see that it is much more likely to have come from a universe that itself had many progeny than it is to have come from a universe that had only a few progeny. — Lee Smolin

The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill them. The rays simply destroyed body cells - caused their nuclei to degenerate and broke their walls. — John Hersey

Shreiking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguinated condors of purple fulgurous sky ... formless phantasms and kalaidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous over-nourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion ... insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and demon arcades choked with fungous vegetation ... — H.P. Lovecraft

human red blood cells have no nuclei and thus possess no DNA of their own. — Tara Rodden Robinson

In the firm expectation that when London shall be a habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul and Westminster Abbey shall stand shapeless and nameless ruins in the midst of an unpeopled marsh, when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges and their historians. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

We want union with something, even if the opposite seems true. Bring two atomic nuclei together and their positive electrostatic forces will repel each other, but, with the patience and strength of the blind god of the galaxies, there comes a point where something bigger takes over and welds them together. Physicists call it the Strong Nuclear Force; I've called this magic glue God. All the elements heavier than hydrogen were so formed, forged in the great hearts of the stars: sulphur, potassium, gold, radium. Everything you can think of. — Sean J Halford

It is as dangerous for people unaccustomed to handling words and unacquainted with their technique to tinker about with these heavily-charged nuclei of emotional power as it would be for me to burst into a laboratory and play about with a powerful electromagnet or other machine highly charged with electrical force. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Since it is proposed to regard chemical reactions as electrical transactions in which reagents act by reason of a constitutional affinity either for electrons or for atomic nuclei, it is important to be able to recognize which type of reactivity any given reagent exhibits. — Christopher Kelk Ingold

John Gurdon spent around fifteen years, starting in the late 1950s, demonstrating that in fact nuclei from specialised cells are able to create whole animals if placed in the right environment i.e. an unfertilised egg — Nessa Carey