Right now, there could well be messages from the stars flying right through this room. Through you and me. And if we had the right receiver set up properly, we could detect them. I still get chills thinking about it.
Frank DrakeRead
It takes years to realize the multiple benefits of science; without adequate, sustained funding for research, the careers of many bright, young scientists may come to a screeching halt.
Interpretation
Sustained funding in science is crucial for nurturing young scientists and advancing knowledge.
This quote emphasizes the importance of long-term financial support for scientific research, suggesting that without it, promising careers and discoveries may be jeopardized. Carol W. Greider points out that many talented individuals rely on stable funding to explore their potential and contribute to the scientific community, highlighting a key issue in the advancement of science and technology.
In practice
A researcher might use this quote in a presentation advocating for increased funding for their lab.
Right now, there could well be messages from the stars flying right through this room. Through you and me. And if we had the right receiver set up properly, we could detect them. I still get chills thinking about it.
It is one of the more striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical textbooks - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature.
Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.
We live in the hope and faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.
But it will be found... that one universal law prevails in all these phenomena. Where two portions of the same light arrive in the eye by different routes, either exactly or very nearly in the same direction, the appearance or disappearance of various colours is determined by the greater or less difference in the lengths of the paths.
Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.
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