We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
Stephen HawkingRead
If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size. On the other hand, if it had been greater by a part in a million, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for stars and planets to form.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The universe's expansion rate was incredibly precise for its development.
Stephen Hawking emphasizes the delicate balance in the conditions of the universe's expansion after the Big Bang. A minuscule change in the rate of expansion would have dramatically altered the universe's ability to form celestial structures like stars and planets, highlighting the extraordinary fine-tuning necessary for the existence of life as we know it.
Themes
UniverseExpansionBig BangFine-TuningCosmology
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on the origins of the universe, one might quote Hawking to illustrate the precision needed for cosmic formation.
More from Stephen Hawking
All quotes βI 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.
Stephen HawkingRead
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.
Stephen HawkingRead
I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.
Stephen HawkingRead
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.
Stephen HawkingRead
In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.
Stephen HawkingRead
Similar quotes
Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.
Frans De WaalRead
From a certain temperature on, the molecules 'condense' without attractive forces; that is, they accumulate at zero velocity. The theory is pretty, but is there some truth in it.
Albert EinsteinRead
If our local, observable universe is embedded in a larger structure, a multiverse, then there's other places in this larger structure that have denizens in them that call their local environs the universe. And conditions in those other places could be very different. Or they could be pretty similar to what we have here.
Sean M. CarrollRead
I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.
Brian GreeneRead
This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.
Charles DarwinRead
Whenever we find, in two forms of life that are unrelated to each other, a similarity of form or of behaviour patterns which relates to more than a few minor details, we assume it to be caused by parallel adaptation to the same life-preserving function.
Konrad LorenzRead