We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
Please join me in applauding the ESA - European Space Agency’s historic efforts with the Rosetta Mission and landing a spacecraft on rotating comet. It may seem like a work of fiction, but it is very real, very impressive, and will help us to further uncover the mysteries surrounding the formation of the solar system. They made a beautiful short film using an imaginary landscape to illustrate today’s historic feat.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote celebrates the achievements of the European Space Agency in space exploration and its impact on our understanding of the solar system.
In this quote, Stephen Hawking expresses admiration for the European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission, which successfully landed a spacecraft on a comet. He emphasizes the extraordinary nature of this accomplishment, which may seem fictional but is a reality that has significant implications for our knowledge of the formation of the solar system. Through this mission, scientists hope to unravel complex mysteries about our celestial neighborhood, illustrating the intersection of human creativity and scientific exploration.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a scientific seminar on space exploration, this quote can inspire discussions about contemporary missions.
More from Stephen Hawking
All quotes →I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.
I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.
The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological-technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science. Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein: TIME's Person of the Century.
In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.
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Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.
Science merely amplifies the capabilities of human beings. Science gives us the ability to do ill and to do good more than we had, and to question science in this respect is like questioning whether people ought to have two hands or just one, because with two hands they could do more evil than they can with just one.
Most scientists know what needs to be done to save our Earth. But the politicians don't listen to them. They will listen to popular pressure; the people got to supply that.
Cancer is not one disease but many diseases.
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.