Seth Shostak Quotes

Modern science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist.

To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.

I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.

There are improbable things suspended in space, like the earth.

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves.

When you buy a jacket, you pick the size to ensure it fits. Similarly, we live in a universe in which the amount of dark energy fits our biological make-up. If the amount of dark energy were substantially different from what we've measured, the environmental conditions would be inhospitable to our form of life.

The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist.

There is something so mysterious that it is almost like God. God is in the equations. God is in the fundamental constants. And that's fine. I mean, that's just redefinition of that which we find mysterious at the basis of the universe.

Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.

The other way is the multiverse way. That says that maybe the universe we are in is one of a very large number of universes. The vast majority will not contain life because they have the wrong gravitational constant or the wrong this constant or that constant. But as the number of universes climbs, the odds mount that a tiny minority of universes will have the right fine-tuning.

The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.

Love is the only thing that counts. Love is what keeps the star and the human beings and the world turning around. Love is the force that binds the whole universe together.

I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

It’s never occurred to me that the stars are still up there shining even in the daytime when we can’t see them.

The real thing that physics tell us about the universe is that it's big, rare event happens all the time — including life — and that doesn't mean it's special.

Man is slightly nearer to the atom than to the star. ... From his central position man can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist. ... [K]nowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

Our lives are God's messengers beneath the stars.

As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to to maintain the existence of Nothing.

The gravitational constant, if it were off by one part in a hundred million million, then the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang would not have occurred in the fashion that was necessary for life to occur. When you look at that evidence, it is very difficult to adopt the view that this was just chance.

I watched the night sky with it's countless stars and its moon, and I wondered about the universe and all that had been created, why the stars and the moon rose at night and the sun in the day, how vast it must be, how I could never understand the infinite measure of its size.

Physics is the science of all the tremendously powerful invisibilities - of magnetism, electricity, gravity, light, sound, cosmic rays. Physics is the science of the mysteries of the universe. How could anyone think it dull?

And we came forth to contemplate the stars.

The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there, for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You.

Once you've got the makings of a star, gravity draws leftover gas and dust into a giant swirling disk. The dust continues to stick together, clumping into rocky asteroids, which eventually become orbiting rocky planets. And voila: a solar system!