American Astronomer Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

There is no observatory in this land, nor in any land, probably, of which the question is not asked, "Are they doing anything? Why don't we hear from them? They should make discoveries, they should publish."

Starlight is falling on every square mile of the earth's surface, and the best we can do at present is to gather up and concentrate the rays that strike at area 100 inches in diameter.

George Ellery Hale

Every object in the Universe with a temperature above absolute zero radiates in the infrared, so this part of the spectrum contains a great deal of information.

Margaret Fuller: I accept the Universe. Thomas Carlyle: Gad! she'd better!

William Wallace Campbell

The function of the scientist is to attain new truths by conquering them from the limitless realm of the unknown, and whether they be brilliant or otherwise, none is too small or insignificant in aspect to deserve his earnest search or joyful welcome.

Benjamin Apthorp Gould

Theory may often delay understanding of new phenomena observed with new technology unless theorists are quite open-minded as to what types of physical laws may need to be applied: conservatism is unsafe...In astrophysics, historically, theories have only seldom had predictive usefulness as guides to experimenters.

Jesse L. Greenstein

The radio sky is no carbon copy of the visible sky; it is a new and different firmament, one where the edge of the universe stands in full view and one which bears the telltale marks of a violent past.

All nature is one, but for convenience of classification we have divided our knowledge into a number of sciences which we usually regard as quite distinct from each other.

William Harkness

Beeping on and on you sing — Are you saying anything? Twinkle, twinkle more, pulsar, How I wonder what you are.

By translating the story told by tree rings, we have pushed back the horizons of history in the United States for nearly eight centuries before Columbus reached the shores of the New World...

Look at how perfect this thing is. It's like a jewel. You've got circular orbits. They're all in the same plane. They're all going around in the same direction... It's perfect, you know. It's gorgeous. It's almost uncanny.

… one of the most detrimental (and least discussed) effects of the crisis in science education in the world today is that we are creating a population increasingly unable to think skeptically about a wide range of issues.

To account for these phenomena, the explanation that at once suggests itself is, that a direct transference of water takes place over the face of the planet, and that the canals are so many waterways.

Percival Lowell

The way of truth is along the path of intellectual sincerity.

Henry Smith Pritchett

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

Self-study, in a sense of learning by yourself without anybody teaching you anything, has an enormous value.

Physical geography invites you to consider the terrestrial machinery which makes day and night, seed-time and harvest; which lifts the vapor from the sea, forms clouds, and waters the earth; which clothes it with verdure and cheers it with warmth, or covers it with snow.

Matthew Fontaine Maury

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

Robert Woodrow Wilson

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

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.