Astrophysics teaches us that we’re not the center of the world.
If everything is so bright, there will be no place for light.
Indeed, the very word “galaxy” derives from the Greek galaxias, “milky.
At this point, the particles came in two types, called quarks – which rhymes with marks – and leptons. Quarks are quirky beasts. You’ll never catch a quark all by itself; it will always be clutching others nearby. I’m sure you have at least one friend or classmate who behaves similarly. Quarks are like those kids who never want to do anything alone, not even walk to the restroom.
There’s nothing like the right telescope in the right hands of the right person at the right time for the right price.
I’m told that when you’re testing rockets and they fail on the launchpad, euphemisms like “It was an experiment high in learning opportunities” are deployed in your press conferences. But really it’s just rockets suffering from projectile dysfunction. That’s what it should be called: projectile dysfunction.
The cosmic perspective is humble.
Voyager went further and also included a gold record album containing diverse sounds from mother Earth, including the human heartbeat, whale “songs,” and musical selections from around the world, including the works of Beethoven and Chuck Berry. While this humanized the message, it’s not clear whether alien ears would have a clue what they were listening to – assuming they have ears in the first place.
The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another.
The Coma cluster is also what we call a “relaxed” system. Please resist the image of a group of galaxies kicking back and listening to smooth jazz.
But really we are one with the rest of nature, fitting neither above nor below, but within.
The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small, from a universe that began in a space far tinier than the period at the end of this sentence to one that is now many billions of light-years across.
The cosmic perspective helps us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to realize that life is about more than money, popularity, clothes, sports, or even grades.
The cosmic perspective shows us that the very atoms and particles that make up our bodies are spread across the universe itself, making us one and the same.
Allow there to be a spectrum in all that you see.
The seven largest emitters of fossil fuels – the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, India, and China.
Don’t start an argument with someone thinking they have the same level of knowledge as you on a particular topic.
School is not only a place to learn, but a place to learn how to learn.
I occasionally wonder if the entire Universe is nothing more than a snow-globe on the living room mantle of a space alien.
Ordered it with whipped cream, of course. When it arrived at the table, I saw no trace of the stuff. After I told the waiter that my cocoa had no whipped cream, he asserted I couldn’t see it because it sank to the bottom. But whipped cream has low density, and floats on all liquids that humans consume. So I offered the waiter two possible explanations: either somebody forgot to add the whipped cream to my hot cocoa or the universal laws of physics were different in his restaurant.