Talk to people... everything good I've done has come from conversations with people. Science is a very social phenomenon.
John C. MatherRead
Astronomers can look back in time. We can look at things as they used to be. We have an idea there was a Big Bang explosion 13.7 billion years ago. We have a story of how galaxies and stars were made. It's an amazing story.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the ability of astronomers to study the universe's history through light from distant objects.
John C. Mather expresses the profound ability of astronomers to explore the universe's past, conveying that by observing celestial bodies, we can uncover narratives about the formation of galaxies and stars that date back billions of years. This exploration not only reveals scientific insights but also evokes a sense of wonder about the cosmos and our place within it.
In practice
In a talk about the mysteries of the universe, this quote can inspire awe and curiosity among the audience.
Talk to people... everything good I've done has come from conversations with people. Science is a very social phenomenon.
Many of the problems facing the nation and the world today may only be solved if their technical elements are understood - climate change, energy supply, health care, and infrastructure, to name just a few.
Even your chin is made up of exploded stars.
There's no such thing as saying that we'll ever find the ultimate cause of stuff. We can only work to push our understanding one step further.
My interest in science started quite early. My earliest school recollection, from age 6, is actually of mathematics, realizing that one could fill an entire page with digits and never come to the largest possible number, so I saw what was meant by infinity.
We are discovering what the universe is really like, and it is totally magnificent, and one can only be inspired and awestruck by what we find.
Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.
Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long.
It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.
Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text.
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