American Cosmologist Quotes

Carl Sagan

George Smoot

John C. Mather

Alan Guth

Lee Smolin

Sean M. Carroll

Paul Steinhardt

There are faint stars in the night sky that you can see, but only if you look to the side of where they shine. They burn too weakly or are too far away to be seen directly, even if you stare. But you can see them out of the corner of your eye because the cells on the periphery of your retina are more sensitive to light. Maybe truth is just like that. You can see it, but only out of the corner of your eye.

We need to reduce military budgets; raise living standards; engender respect for learning; support science, scholarship, invention, and industry; promote free inquiry; reduce domestic coercion; involve the workers more in managerial decisions; and promote genuine respect and understanding derived from an acknowledgement of our common humanity and our common jeopardy.

Each black hole is a bud that leads to a new universe of moments.

I am convinced that the story of the universe that has come out of three centuries of modern scientific work will be recognized as a supreme human achievement, the scientific enterprise's central gift to humanity, a revelation having a status equal to that of the great religious revelations of the past.

When one studies the properties of atoms one found that the reality is far stranger than anybody would have invented in the form of fiction.

Nothing in nature or the cosmos is ever completely still — as I write this, several wild Mallards have returned to the Museum courtyard and are creating a frantic spectacle of water and wings as they dive and attack in their annual spring ritual. Further from home, a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 56 million light years from Earth has recently been observed to be spinning at close to the speed of light.

What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe.... It's like looking at God.

The speed of time is 1 hour per hour, no matter what else is going on in the universe.

Sean M. Carroll

The inflationary model of the universe provides a possible mechanism by which the observed universe could have evolved from an infinitesimal region. It is then tempting to go one step further and speculate that the entire universe evolved from literally nothing.

Paul Steinhardt

"The Big Bang Theory comes out a winner. This is the ultimate in tracing one's cosmic roots." He added, "We are seeing the cold glow still remaining from the initially very hot Big Bang... The closer we examine the Big Bang the simpler the picture gets."

I.reject the argument put forth by many fundamentalists that science has nothing to do with religion because God is not among the things making up the universe in which we live. Surely if a necessity for a god-concept in the universe ever turns up, that necessity will become evident to the scientist.

Ralph Asher Alpher