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When it comes to the things that people really want in science fiction - like space travel - the simplest things end up causing them not to happen. Humans are 100-pound bags of water, built to live on Earth.
Lawrence M. Krauss
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Human biology and Earth's environment challenge the realization of science fiction dreams like space travel.

Lawrence M. Krauss highlights the inherent challenges humans face in pursuing ambitious scientific goals, such as space travel. He emphasizes that our physical limitations, primarily being biological creatures adapted to Earth's conditions, pose significant barriers to achieving these aspirations, illustrating the contrast between our dreams and the realities dictated by our nature and environment.

Themes

Space TravelHuman LimitationsScience FictionBiologyChallenges

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the future of space exploration, one could quote Krauss to highlight the biological challenges that need to be addressed.

More from Lawrence M. Krauss

The one experience that I hope every student has at some point in their lives is to have some belief you profoundly, deeply hold, proved to be wrong because that is the most eye-opening experience you can have, and as a scientist, to me, is the most exciting experience I can ever have.
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If our species is to survive, our future will probably require outposts beyond our own planet.
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The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
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I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false.
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To the extent that we even understand string theory, it may imply a massive number of possible different universes with different laws of physics in each universe, and there may be no way of distinguishing between them or saying why the laws of physics are the way they are. And if I can predict anything, then I haven't explained anything.
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The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.
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