No doubt, the most challenging class of questions in science is the origin of things. Neil deGrasse Tyson More Quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson More Quotes From Neil deGrasse Tyson With one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) that all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world Neil deGrasse Tyson bacteriabad-asspeople We should not measure our space-faring era by where footprints have been laid.... We should measure our era by how many people take no notice at all. A legacy rises to become culture only when its elements are so common that they no longer attract comment. Neil deGrasse Tyson legacyspacepeople Perhaps these ancient observatories like Stonehenge 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. Neil deGrasse Tyson starsmoonmoving 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 sunsetrunningmoving Astronomers do not commonly use Venereal, in favor of the less contagious-sounding Venutian. Blame the medical community, who snatched the word long before astronomers had any good use for it. I suppose you can't blame the doctors. Venus is the goddess of beauty and love, so she ought to be the goddess of its medical consequences. Neil deGrasse Tyson beauty-and-lovedoctorslong I bought it, I read it, and I heeded its advice. I remain unabducted. Neil deGrasse Tyson pseudoscienceadvice We need more science in the world. Train me. Neil deGrasse Tyson trainworldneeds I lose sleep at night wondering whether we are intelligent enough to figure out the universe. I don't know. Neil deGrasse Tyson intelligentsleepnight I never got into 'Star Wars.' Maybe because they made no attempt to portray real physics. At all. Neil deGrasse Tyson starsrealwar I was born the same week NASA was founded, so we're the same age and feel some of the same pains, joys, and frustrations. Neil deGrasse Tyson frustrationpainjoy Private enterprise can never lead a space frontier. It's not possible because a space frontier is expensive, it has unknown risks and it has unquantified risks. Neil deGrasse Tyson enterpriseriskspace 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. Neil deGrasse Tyson would-besomewhere-elsewater A common way to compute density is, of course, to take the ratio of an object's mass to its volume. But other types of densities exist, such as the resistance of somebody's brain to the imparting of common sense. Neil deGrasse Tyson common-sensebrainscience All the traditional STEM fields, the science, technology, engineering, and math fields, are stoked when you dream big in an agency such as NASA. Neil deGrasse Tyson technologydreammath Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they've beaten our top human chess champions. Neil deGrasse Tyson championplayerchess I suppose I can live with missing decimals, missing floors to tall buildings, and floors that are named instead of numbered. A more serious problem is the limited capacity of the human mind to grasp the relative magnitudes of large numbers. Counting at the rate of one number per second...to count to a trillion takes 32,000 years, which is as much time as has elapsed since people first drew on cave walls. Neil deGrasse Tyson wallnumbersscience And I don't care what else anyone has ever told you, the Sun is white, not yellow. Human color perception is a complicated business, but if the Sun were yellow, like a yellow lightbulb, then white stuff such as snow would reflect this light and appear yellow-a snow condition confirmed to happen only near fire hydrants. Neil deGrasse Tyson whiteyellowscience For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling. Neil deGrasse Tyson safetystarsscience I'm fascinated by the deaths of stars and the havoc they wreak on their environments. Neil deGrasse Tyson havocenvironmentstars I didn't even know there were stars to look at to not see. If you don't know that they're there, you don't know that you're missing them. Neil deGrasse Tyson starsmissingscience
