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Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes - Page 25

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There's no shortage of people that we can put on, because science touches us all.

There's no shortage of people that we can put on, because science touches us all.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
People, Shortage
Source: www.avclub.com

Evidence my 14yr old daughter is geek-literate: In lieu of OK, one might type K while texting. She instead typed "Potassium".

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Daughter, Texting, Potassium
Twitter post from Mar 29, 2011

But my vote for Venus's most peculiar feature is the presence of craters that are all relatively young and uniformly distributed over its surface. This innocuous-sounding feature implicates a single planetwide catastrophe that reset the cratering clock... turning Venus's entire surface into the American automotive dream-a totally paved planet.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Dream, Science, Venus
Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007). “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”, p.216, W. W. Norton & Company

There is no science in this world like physics. Nothing comes close to the precision with which physics enables you to understand the world around you. It's the laws of physics that allow us to say exactly what time the sun is going to rise. What time the eclipse is going to begin. What time the eclipse is going to end.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Law, World, Sun
"In the Words of Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Inspiring Voice of Science". Book by Frank Johnson, 2014.

Something bad happened on both Mars with its dried-up watercourses and Venus with its runaway greenhouse effect. Could something bad happen on Earth too? Our species currently turns row upon row of environmental knobs, without much regard to long-term consequences.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Long, Environmental, Mars

I never got into 'Star Wars.' Maybe because they made no attempt to portray real physics. At all.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Stars, Real, War
"Neil deGrasse Tyson Tells Us Why 'Star Trek' Is So Much Better Than 'Star Wars'" by Will Wei, www.businessinsider.com. May 14, 2013.

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
Space, People, Legacy
Neil Degrasse Tyson (2010). “The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, p.69, Prometheus Books

There are photons that have been traveling for 30,000 years, and I'm... snatching them from this journey and planting them into my digital detector. And then I started feeling bad for the photon, and I said maybe it wanted to continue but I got in its way. But then I said, no, those are probably happier photons than the one that slammed into the mountainside that will go unanalyzed and will not contribute to the depth of our understanding of the universe.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science, Journey, Years

Countless women are alive today because of ideas stimulated by a design flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Bad Ass, Ideas, Space

As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Children, Night, Average

Science reveals that all life on Earth is one.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Earth

Space in general gave us GPS - that's not specifically NASA, but it's investments in space.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Gps, Space, Investment

Space only becomes ordinary when the frontier is no longer being breached.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Space, Ordinary, Frontiers

I have found that when calculating what no one has calculated before, like my observing sessions on the mountain, my mental acuity peaks. Ironically, these are the times that I would flunk the reality check normally reserved for mental patients and dazed boxers: What is your name? What day is it? Who is the president of the United States?... I do not know, and I do not care. I am at peace with my equations as I connect to the cosmic engines that drive our universe.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Reality, Names, President

To the scientist, the universality of physical laws makes the cosmos a marvelously simple place. By comparison, human nature-the psychologist's domain-is infinitely more daunting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Simple, Law, Cosmos
Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007). “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”, p.36, W. W. Norton & Company

The number of people in the world engaged in this search for catastrophic impactors totals one or two dozen. How long into the future are you willing to protect Homo sapiens on Earth? Before you answer that question, take a detour to Arizona's Meteor Crater during your next vacation.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Vacation, Two, Numbers

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
Space, Risk, Enterprise

When provoked, the itsy-bitsy invertebrates known as tardigrades can suspend their metabolism. In that state, they can survive temperatures of... 73 K for days on end, making them hardy enough to endure being stranded on Neptune. So the next time you need space travelers with the right stuff, you might want to choose yeast and tardigrades, and leave your astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts at home.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Home, Space, Needs
Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007). “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”, p.177, W. W. Norton & Company

So while you're getting ripped apart head to toe as you fall into a black hole, you will also extrude through the fabric of space and time, like toothpaste squeezed through a tube. To all the words in the English language that describe ways to die (e.g., homicide, suicide, electrocution, suffocation, starvation) we add the term spaghettification.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Suicide, Fall, Science

I knew Pluto was popular among elementary schoolkids, but I had no idea they would mobilize into a 'Save Pluto' campaign. I now have a drawer full of hate letters from hundreds of elementary schoolchildren (with supportive cover letters from their science teachers) pleading with me to reverse my stance on Pluto. The file includes a photograph of the entire third grade of a school posing on their front steps and holding up a banner proclaiming, 'Dr. Tyson - Pluto is a Planet!'

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Teacher, Hate, School

Feeling a little small? Well, in the context of the cosmos, we are small.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Wisdom, Nature, Science

Let us not fool ourselves into thinking we went to the Moon because we are pioneers, or discoverers, or adventurers. We went to the Moon because it was the militaristically expedient thing to do.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Bad Ass, Thinking
Neil Degrasse Tyson (2010). “The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, p.70, Prometheus Books

It's part of our pop culture to give animals human personalities and talents.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Animal, Giving, Personality
"How Smart Are Animals?". "NOVA scienceNOW", www.pbs.org. February 9, 2011.

If cosmological theory were dominated by women, who are no strangers to cycles, how can we know for sure that we wouldn't then be told that the oscillating universe is the more aesthetically fulfilling alternative?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Culture, Alternatives, Stranger

By the way, were we to find life-forms on Venus, we would probably call them Venutians, just as people from Mars would be Martians. But according to rules of Latin genitives, to be “of Venus” ought to make you a Venereal. Unfortunately, medical doctors reached that word before astronomers did. Can’t blame them, I suppose. Venereal disease long predates astronomy, which itself stands as only the second oldest profession.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Latin, Doctors, Long
Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007). “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries”, p.80, W. W. Norton & Company

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