Tag Archive for: astronomy

Zitate

Paul Feyerabend | the establishment of the heliocentric worldview

"There are numerous sociological and historical case studies describing how opinions are established as "knowledge" in societies. For example, Paul Feyerabend explained in 1975 that the establishment of the heliocentric worldview was not based on new discoveries, but on a clever propaganda strategy of Galileo Galilei. According to Feyerabend, the representatives of the geocentric world view "did not recognize the propaganda value of predictions and dramatic shows, nor did they make use of the intellectual and social power of the newly created classes. They lost because they did not take advantage of existing opportunities."

Paul Feyerabend

Sir Fred Hoyle | So, does the earth spin?

"We can talk with precision of a body as spinning around relative to something or another, but there is no such thing as absolute spin: the Earth is not spinning to those of us who live on its surface and our point of view is as good as anyone else’s – but no better." (F. Hoyle: Frontiers of Astronomy, New York, Harper & Row, 1966, p304.)

Sir Fred Hoyle

Walter van der Kamp | Since Galileo science has shed logical proofs in favour of plausibility

"Actually neither this Galileo, nor his mentor Copernicus, had a shred of truly tangible and unequivocal evidence for their heliocentric belief – and well do historians, astronomers, and philosophers of science know it! As I recently found it succinctly expressed in a research paper “Since Galileo science has shed logical proofs in favour of plausibility. Indeed, by this “scientific method” of adding plausible explanations to plausible explanations astronomy has arrived at the present view of the cosmos. However, those who forget that “plausible” and “proven” are not synonyms inevitably will see their chickens come home to roost."

Walter van der Kamp

Prof. Steven Weinberg | The International Space Station is an orbital turkey

"The International Space Station is an orbital turkey....No important science has come out of it. I could almost say no science has come out of it. And I would go beyond that and say that the whole manned spaceflight program, which is so enormously expensive, has produced nothing of scientific value."

Prof. Steven Weinberg

Brian Cox | There is absolutely no basis at all for thinking the world is flat

“There is absolutely no basis at all for thinking the world is flat. Nobody in human history, as far as I know, has thought the world was flat. The Greeks measured the radius of the Earth. I cannot conceive of a reason why anybody would think the world is flat. There are interesting bits of physics that tell you you live on a spinning planet and one of them is called the Coriolis force, which is the force that's responsible for causing storm systems to rotate on the planet. So when you see those beautiful pictures of storms spinning around and rotating, the reason for that is that we live on a spinning planet. It's probably the most nonsensical suggestion that a thinking human being could possibly make. It is drivel.”

Brian Edward Cox

Max Planck | Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind

"Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with."

Max Planck

Michio Kaku | Why do we think that?

"Why do we think that? Because we have a theory called string theory, it is fantastic it is incredible. It has astounded the world of mathematics, and physics and now you can't move in the physics world without bumping into somebody who wants to talk about the 10th Dimension the 11th Dimension the Multiverse hyperspace time travel. All the things that were once considered science fiction are now centerpiece in our understanding of the nature of everything."

Dr. Michio Kaku

George A. Keysworth | All government agencies lie part of the time

"All government agencies lie part of the time, but NASA is the only one I've ever encountered that does so routinely. "

George A. Keyworth

George Francis Rayner Ellis | People need to be aware

"People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations….For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations….You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."

George Francis Rayner Ellis

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

"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

"There is an alien presence on earth now."

Jesuit Monsignor Corrado Balducci

Jesuit Guy Consolmagno | Aliens for their salvation

"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

"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 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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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 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

"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.

"[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