Aliens might be surprised to learn that in a cosmos with limitless starlight, humans kill for energy sources buried in the sand
Interpretation
The quote reflects on humanity's conflict over energy resources, contrasting our actions with the vastness of the universe.
Neil Degrasse Tyson's quote highlights the irony of human behavior, suggesting that while we exist in a universe filled with endless possibilities and resources, we still engage in destructive conflicts over limited energy sources like fossil fuels. It prompts us to reconsider our priorities and the choices we make in the face of such abundance, questioning why we resort to violence and competition rather than cooperation and sustainability.
In practice
In a discussion about alternative energy sources, this quote can be used to illustrate the urgency of our situation.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
The press still thinks [global warming] is controversial. So they find the 1% of the scientists and put them up as if they're 50% of the research results. You in the public would have no idea that this is basically a done deal and that we're on to other problems, because the journalists are trying to give it a 50/50 story. It's not a 50/50 story. It's not. Period.
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.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.
Lots of people think, well, we're humans; we're the most intelligent and accomplished species; we're in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That's what's going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
In a way, women are a psychic immigrant group.
She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.
Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation. When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve.
The eternal stars shine out again, so soon as it is dark enough.
There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,--when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation.
Reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays.
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