Tag Archive for: Astronomie

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W. Winckler | As an engineer of many years standing

"As an engineer of many years standing, I saw that this absurd allowance is only permitted in school books. No engineer would dream of allowing anything of the kind. I have projected many miles of railways and many more of canals and the allowance has not even been thought of, much less allowed for. This allowance for curvature means this - that it is 8” for the first mile of a canal, and increasing at the ratio by the square of the distance in miles; thus a small navigable canal for boats, say 30 miles long, will have, by the above rule an allowance for curvature of 600 feet. Think of that and then please credit engineers as not being quite such fools. Nothing of the sort is allowed. We no more think of allowing 600 feet for a line of 30 miles of railway or canal, than of wasting our time trying to square the circle"

W. Winckler

David Wardlaw Scott | Children are taught in their geography books, when too young to apprehend aright the meaning of such things

in David Wardlow Scott

"Children are taught in their geography books, when too young to apprehend aright the meaning of such things, that the world is a great globe revolving around the Sun, and the story is repeated continuously, year by year, till they reach maturity, at which time they generally become so absorbed in other matters as to be indifferent as to whether the teaching be true or not, and, as they hear of nobody contradicting it, they presume that it must be the correct thing, if not to believe at least to receive it as a fact. They thus tacitly give their assent to a theory which, if it had first been presented to them at what are called ‘years of discretion,’ they would at once have rejected. The consequences of evil-teaching, whether in religion or in science, are far more disastrous than is generally supposed, especially in a luxurious laisser faire age like our own. The intellect becomes weakened and the conscience seared."

David Wardlaw Scott

Carl Sagan | The bamboozle has captured us

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

Carl Sagan

Corrado Balducci | There is an alien presence on earth now

in Corrado Balducci

"There is an alien presence on earth now."

Jesuit Monsignor Corrado Balducci

Jesuit Guy Consolmagno | Aliens for their salvation

in Guy Consolmagno

"Very soon the nations will look to Aliens for their salvation."

"contemporary societies will soon see extraterrestrials as the saviors of mankind"

"Jesus might be the son of a star child."

Jesuit Guy Consolmagno

Jesuit Pater Giuseppe Tanzella Nitti | information coming from another world

in Giuseppe Tanzella Nitti

"Very soon we will not have to deny our Christian faith...but there is information coming from another world, and once it is confirmed it is going to require a re-reading of the Gospel as we know it."

Jesuit Father Giuseppe Tanzella Nitti

Michio Kaku | in my field, uses the so-called Scientific Method

"In Science, we always say that you make observations you have a theory you make more observations and it’s a very very tedious process… WRONG! Nobody that I know of in my field, uses the so-called Scientific Method. In our field, it’s by the seat of your pants, it’s leaps of logic, it’s GUESSWORK."

Dr. Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku | the largest mismatch between theory and experiment

"Usually in science, if we're off by a factor of 2 or a factor of 10, we call that horrible. We say, something's wrong with the theory. We're off by a factor of 10! However, in cosmology, we're off by a factor of 10 to the 120th. That is one with 100 and 20 zeroes after it. This is the largest mismatch between theory and experiment in the history of science."

Michio Kaku

Papst Pius XII | Big Bang – Creation – Science

in Papst Pius XII

"In fact, it seems that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial 'Fiat lux' Let there be light uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of the chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore, there is a Creator, God exists. Although it is neither explicit nor complete, this is the reply we were awaiting from science, and which the present human generation is awaiting from it."

Papst Pius XII

Neil deGrasse Tyson | I’m a fan of what Mark Twain said

in Neil deGrasse Tyson

"I'm a fan of what Mark Twain said, he said; Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson | let the dark lord Satan show you the way

in Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Some have asked me where scientists turn after science has yielded no clear solution. I tell these people what my grandfather Charles Darwin told me: roll back your eyes, contort your body, and let the dark lord Satan show you the way"

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Don Pettit | The only limit to human future is in our own imagination

"I'd go to the moon in a Nanosecond, but the Problem is that we no longer have that technology to do that anymore, we used to have it, but we destroyed it and it's a painful process to build it back again, but going to Mars should be one of the next series of steps that humans do. The first step should be going back to the Moon for a number of technical reasons and exploration reasons. And then after that Mars, maybe high orbit in Venus atmosphere maybe going to Europa. There's all kinds of targets to go to, places of interest in our solar system. The only limit to human future is in our own imagination."

Don Pettit (Nasa „Astronaut“)

Elon Musk | you can tell it’s real because it looks so fake

"I think it looks so ridiculous and impossible, you can tell it's real because it looks so fake, honestly. We'd have way better CGI if it was fake. The colors all look kind of weird in space. There's no atmospheric occlusion; everything's too crisp. It's just literally a normal car in space — I kind of like the absurdity of that, it's kind of silly and fun, but I think that silly, fun things are important … I think the imagery of it is something that's going to get people excited around the world, and it's still tripping me out. I'm tripping balls here."

Elon Musk

Nikola Tesla | the secrets of the universe

in Nikola Tesla

"If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration."

Nikola Tesla

Alexander Unzicker | Physics has lost its grip on the ground

in Alexander Unzicker

"Physics has lost its grip on the ground. For every anomaly, scientists pull a new parameter out of a hat instead of trying to understand the underlying principles. They have accumulated more than 30 "natural constants": all values that no one can explain."

Alexander Unzicker

Werner Heisenberg | This mathematical scheme had for me a magical attraction

in Werner Heisenberg

"I found in the formulae. which were the results of my collaboration with Kramers, a mathematics which in a certain sense worked automatically, independently of all physical models. This mathematical scheme had for me a magical attraction, and I was fascinated by the thought that perhaps here could be seen the first threads of an enormous net of deep-set relations."

Werner Heisenberg

Lawrence Krauss | asking the right experimental questions

in Lawrence Maxwell Krauss

"We do not know whether we are on the right track and whether we are even asking the right experimental questions. But we have no choice but to continue with all our might."

Lawrence Krauss

Carl Sagan | Imagination will often carry us to worlds

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere."

Carl Sagan

George Bernard Shaw | In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat

in George Bernard Shaw

"In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one per cent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific."

George Bernard Shaw

Albert Einstein | no longer understands the theory of relativity itself

in Albert Einstein

"Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more."

Albert Einstein

David McGowan | The Moon Landing is essentially the adult version of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

in David McGowan

"[The Moon Landing] is essentially the adult version of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. What primarily motivates them is fear. But it is not the lie itself that scares people; it is what that lie says about the world around us and how it really functions. For if NASA was able to pull off such an outrageous hoax before the entire world, and then keep that lie in place for four decades, what does that say about the control of the information we receive? What does that say about the media, and the scientific community, and the educational community, and all the other institutions we depend on to tell us the truth? What does that say about the very nature of the world we live in?"

David McGowan

Fred Hoyle | Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside

“Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available…a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.“

Fred Hoyle

John Herschel | In entering upon any scientific pursuit, one of the student’s first endeavours

in John Frederick William Herschel

"In entering upon any scientific pursuit, one of the student’s first endeavours ought to be, to prepare his mind for the reception of truth, by dismissing, or at least loosening his hold on, all such crude and hastily adopted notions respecting the objects and relations he is about to examine as may tend to embarrass or mislead him.; and to strengthen himself, by something of an effort and a resolve, for the unprejudiced admission of any conclusion which shall appear to be supported by careful observation and logical argument, even should it prove of a nature adverse to notions he may have previously formed for himself, or taken up, without examination, on the credit of others."

John Frederick William Herschel (A Treatise on Astronomy 1833)

Salviati | there is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect that

"You wonder that there are so few followers of the Pythagorean opinion [that the earth moves] while I am astonished that there have been any up to this day who have embraced and followed it.

Nor can I ever sufficiently admire the outstanding acumen of those who have taken hold of this opinion and accepted it as true:

they have, through sheer force of intellect, done such violence to their own senses as to prefer what reason told them over that which sensible experience plainly showed them to be the contrary.

For the arguments against the whirling [the rotation] of the earth we have already examined are very plausible, as we have seen; and the fact that the Ptolemaics and the Aristotelians and all their disciples took them to be conclusive is indeed a strong argument of their effectiveness.

But the experiences which overtly contradict the annual movement [the movement of the earth around the sun] are indeed so much greater in their apparent force that, I repeat, there is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect that Aristarchus and Copernicus were able to make reason so conquer sense that in defiance of the latter, the former became mistress of their belief."

Salviati