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Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes about Moon

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Everything we do understand about the universe - the periodic table of elements, Einstein's laws, Newton's laws, all of chemistry, all of biology - that's 4 percent of the universe. We got to the moon on the 4 percent

Everything we do understand about the universe - the periodic table of elements, Einstein's laws, Newton's laws, all of chemistry, all of biology - that's 4 percent of the universe. We got to the moon on the 4 percent we do understand. We landed on Mars on the 4 percent we do understand. So the day we crack the nut of the rest of that 95 percent... Oh my gosh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Law, Nuts
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

We went to the moon and discovered Earth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Earth
"A Starring Role: Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson". Interview with Wayne Alan Brenner, www.austinchronicle.com. November 26, 2013.

There's an old saying in the space community: 'If God wanted us to be a spacefaring species, he would have given us a moon'.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Space, Community

NASA was invented as a response to Cold War steps. There are those who presumed that we went to the moon because we're explorers. We went to the moon because we were at war with the Soviet Union. And so when it became clear that they (Soviet Union) were not going to the moon, we're done with the moon.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
War, Moon, Unions
"Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Writing, Mars, Curiosity, and the Higgs Boson". Interview With Sandra Kitt, aalbc.com. January 1, 2013.

We didn't go to the moon to explore or because it was in our DNA or because we're Americans. We went because we were at war and we felt a threat.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
War, Moon, Dna

If you find life on Europa [Jupiter's moon], like, what would you call it? Would it be, like, Europeans?

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Jupiter, Ifs

I grew up in New York City where there is no night sky. Nobody has a relationship with the sky, because, particularly in the day, there was air pollution and light pollution, and you look up, and your sight line terminates on buildings. You know the sun and maybe the moon, and that's about it. So what happens is that I am exposed to the night sky as you would see it from a mountaintop, and I'm just struck by it. Suppose I grew up on a farm where I had that sky every night of my life - then you're not going to be struck by it. It's just the wallpaper of your nighttime dome.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
New York, Moon, Night
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

We went to the moon using just Newton's laws of motion and gravity. Newtonian dynamics we call it. So then we find out, "Well, this works because there's certain regimes we've never tested it in." Had we done so, we would show that it didn't work: For example, at very high speeds, very high gravity, Newton's laws fail. They just fail. You need Einstein's laws of motion and gravity. Those would be his special theory of relativity and general theory of relativity. Now you invoke those and it works.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Law, Special
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Next time you're stunned by a large moon on the horizon, bend over and view it between your legs. The effect goes away entirely.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Views, Mind Blowing

Does the full moon affect people's behavior, you ask? Yup. It makes people think the full moon affects people's behavior.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Thinking, People

It’s short-sighted to think ads won’t one day end up wherever humans are - even the moon.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Thinking, One Day

I've said multiple times that the world's first trillionaire is going to be the person who exploits the resources of asteroids, the natural resources that are rare on earth and common on selected asteroids. So there are many different reasons you might want to go into space. You might want to spend your honeymoon on the far side of the moon.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Space, Want
Source: bookriot.com

If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, there would be no greater tragedy in the history of life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves but because we lacked the foresight. The dominant species that replaces us in post-apocalyptic Earth just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbially peabrained dinosaurs.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Skeletons, Museums

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
Stars, Moving, Moon

We only recently figured out the origin of our own moon. And we have some idea of how the Sun and Earth formed, but that's only because modern telescopes empower us to see other stars and planets freshly hatched within gas clouds across the galaxy. As for the origin of life itself, the transition from inanimate molecules to what any of us would call life remains one of the great frontiers of biology.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Stars, Moon, Ideas
Source: www.pbs.org

I'm a fan of the planets in any combination. When I was born, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Sun, and the Moon were all in the sky.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Sky, Fans
Neil Degrasse Tyson (2010). “The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, p.110, Prometheus Books

The supermoon is a 16-inch pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza. It's a slightly bigger moon; I ain't using the adjective 'supermoon.'

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Adjectives, Inches

I agree that we should go back to the moon and on to Mars. We should treat all objects in the solar system, including comets and asteroids, as exploration targets.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Target, Mars
Source: www.foxnews.com

Going into orbit around Earth - where the space station is today, and where the space shuttles and John Glenn and all those folks go-that's three-eighths of an inch above a schoolroom globe, just FYI. That's not very far from Earth. Yes, you are off Earth, but you're not really going anywhere yet. The moon was the only real destination.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Real, Moon, Space
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

When we went to the moon and realized that the Soviet Union had no realistic plans of getting to the moon, then we stopped going to the moon.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Unions, Realistic
Source: blog.sfgate.com

People say, oh we just need charismatic leaders to continue on to Mars. Now we've gone to the moon, of course Mars is next. No. Mars was never, of course, next. It is next if you think we went to the moon because we're explorers, but if you know we went to the moon because we were at war then we're never going to Mars. There's no military reason to do it, to justify the expenditure.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Military, War, Moon

You can make a stack high enough to reach the moon and back, and only then will you have used your 100 billion hamburgers. This is terrifying news to cows.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science, Moon, News

When Kennedy said, 'Let's go to the moon,' we didn't yet have a vehicle that wouldn't kill you on launch. He said we'll land a man on the moon in eight years and bring him back. That was an audacious goal to put forth in front of the American people.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Men, Eight
Interview with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. March 23, 2012.

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

As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moon, Thinking, Space

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