Mars once was wet and fertile. It's now bone dry. Something bad happened on Mars. I want to know what happened on Mars so that we may prevent it from happening here on Earth.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding past events on Mars to avoid similar mistakes on Earth.
Neil Degrasse Tyson's quote reflects the urgency of learning from the historical changes that have occurred on Mars, suggesting that the planet was once capable of supporting life. By understanding the reasons behind Mars' transformation from a wet, fertile world to a dry, lifeless one, humanity can take proactive measures to prevent ecological disasters on Earth.
In practice
In a lecture about climate change, one might quote Tyson to illustrate the importance of understanding planetary environments.
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.
The recent developments in cosmology strongly suggest that the universe may be the ultimate free lunch.
As, pricked out with less and greater lights, between the poles of the universe, the Milky Way so gleameth white as to set very sages questioning.
Gravitational waves, because they are so imperturbable - they go through everything - they will tell you the most information you can get about the earliest instants that go on in the universe.
'Goals' and 'caps' on carbon emissions are practically worthless, if coal emissions continue, because of the exceedingly long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the air.
If what the science tells us about climate change is correct, then unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world.
I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up and they keep their curiosity.
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