American Astronomer Quotes

Among the innumerable celestial objects that may be seen through a telescope, the most beautiful of all is perhaps the planet Saturn. When viewed in the evening twilight while the sky is still bright, the yellow gold ball and its unbelievable rings shimmer in a brilliant blue medium, more like a rare work of art than a natural phenomenon.

Fred Lawrence Whipple

If the universe is a universe of thought then its creations must have been an act of thought.

The face of the sun is not without expression, but it tells us precious little of what is in its heart.

Armin Joseph Deutsch

The electrons are like little organisms, or least hearts, whose synchronous systole and diastole make the life of the universe, perpetually receiving and transmitting energy from an inexhaustible source.

Frank Washington Very

If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.

Put bluntly yet magnanimously, the scenario of cosmic evolution grants us unparalled "big thinking," from which may well emerge the global ethics and planetary citizenship likely needed if our species is to remain part of that same cosmic evolutionary scenario.

I have long believed that an experimentalist should not be unduely inhibited by theoretical untidyness. If he insists in having every last theoretical T crossed before he starts his research the chances are that he will never do a significant experiment. And the more significant and fundamental the experiment the more theoretical uncertainty may be tolerated. By contrast, the more important and difficult the experiment the more that experimental care is warranted. There is no point in attempting a half-hearted experiment with an inadequate apparatus.

Robert H. Dicke

Since the [Cepheid] variables are probably at nearly the same distance from the Earth, their periods are apparently associated with their actual emission of light, as determined by their mass, density, and surface brightness.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

No theory is sacred. When a theory fails to meet the test of verified predictions, it is modified to include the larger field, or, vary rarely, it may be abandoned completely.

In fact, it is safe to say that the situation has degenerated to the point of absurdity. Asteroids have been named after girlfriends, financial supporters, cats, and computers. For the traditionalist like myself, it seems a pity that the naming of asteroids has become so trivialized.

Charles T. Kowal

From the stars has come the matter of our world and of our bodies, and it is to the stars that we will someday return.

T. A. Heppenheimer

We need a new kind of engineer, one who can build bridges to society as well as bridges across rivers.

William Henry Pickering

If a little kid ever asks you just why the sky is blue, you look him or her right in the eye and say, "It's because of quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae."

Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world?

Enoch Fitch Burr

Young man, I am afraid you are wasting your time. If there were any more planets they would have been found long before this.

A theory can never be proven absolutely true, therefore there is no end to scientific endeavor. A true scientific theory is always open to be disproved, and the burden of proof is continually placed on the scientist.

Kristine Larsen

I may be a minority of one in advocating that one should NOT separate science and politics—partly because I am old enough to remember the Weimar Republic before 1934...

Edwin Ernest Salpeter

A scientist works largely by intuition. Given enough experience, a scientist examining a problem can leap to an intuition as to what the solution 'should look like.'... Science is ultimately based on insight, not logic.

Guy Consolmagno

The human brain is by far the most complex physical object known to us in the entire cosmos.

Someone has said that a pessimist is a man who looks at the world with one eye closed, and that an optimist is a man who looks at the world with both eyes closed.

Harlan True Stetson

Whenever we look in nature we can see spiral forms in the uncurling fern, the snail, the nautilus shell, the hurricane, the stirred cup of coffee, the water that swirls out of a wash bowl. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to see spirals in the great star systems whirling in space. Yet they remain a great, intriguing question.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

We became astronomers thinking we were studying the universe, and now we learn that we are just studying the 5 or 10 percent that is luminous.

There is a point of view among astronomical researchers that is generally referred to as the Principle of Mediocrity.... If the Sun and its retinue of worlds is only one system among many, then many other systems will be like ours: home to life. Indeed, to the extent that this is true, we should be prepared for the possibility that, even in the Milky Way galaxy, billions of planets may be carpeted by the dirty, nasty business known as life.

The evidence at present available points strongly to the conclusion that the spirals are individual galaxies, or island universes, comparable with our own galaxy in dimension and in number of component units.

Stating his conviction on the nature of nebulae during the Shapley-Curtis debate on 26 Apr 1920 to the National Academy of Sciences.

Heber Doust Curtis

Cosmology is a science which has only a few observable facts to work with.

Robert Woodrow Wilson