Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

There are thousands of asteroids whose orbit in the Solar System crosses that of Earth. And we have a little acronym for them - NEOs: near Earth objects. And our biggest goal is to try to catalogue them, so we know in advance if one is going to put us at risk.

No matter how you measure it, whether you measure the amount of mass or you measure the number of bodies, most of our solar system exists out beyond the orbits of the asteroids. So we could not have claimed to know our own solar system until Voyager had toured the giant planets.

It shouldn't be so difficult to determine what a planet is. When you're watching a science fiction show like 'Star Trek' and they show up at some object in space and turn on the viewfinder, the audience and the people in the show know immediately whether it's a planet or a star or a comet or an asteroid.

Going to the Kuiper Belt is like an archaeological dig into the history of the solar system.

The stars associated with the solar system, such as the planets and asteroids (and it should be remembered that the term star in Biblical usage applies to any heavenly body other than the sun and moon) would be particularly likely to be involved, in the view of the heavy concentration of angels, both bad and evil, around the planet Earth.

Look at that! If you ever needed convincing that we live in the solar system, that we are on a ball of rock, orbiting around the Sun with other balls of rock, then look at that! That's the solar system coming down and grabbing you by the throat.

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

We're just one rock surrounded by this immense universe.

The chances that your tombstone will read 'Killed by Asteroid' are about the same as they'd be for 'Killed in Airplane Crash.'

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

Let's find a new way to think about the entire taxonomy of solar system objects, and not clutch to this concept of 'planet,' which, of course, only ever meant, 'Do you move against the background stars, regardless of what you're made of?'

The first trillionaire in the world will be the person who mines asteroids.

Bits and pieces flung into the universe, sticking in the sky like cotton balls on a jet black velcro surface.

When you look at Venus and the Earth, they formed at about the same place in the solar system. They're made of about the same materials; they're about the same size.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

Small bodies in our solar system, like comets and asteroids, help us understand how the solar system formed and provide opportunities to advance exploration.

Most people have already seen a cosmic collision. If you've seen a shooting star ever, you've seen a cosmic collision, because a shooting star is not a star. It's a tiny dust or pea sized fragment of an asteroid or a comet hitting our atmosphere and burning up as it hits in, as it comes in.

Planets look about the same here as they do to you on the Earth because we really aren't that much closer. Our home, the International Space Station, orbits around the Earth at about 200 miles.

If you put Earth out beyond Neptune, you wouldn't be able to call it a planet because it couldn't clear its zone.

We're going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system's attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.

Hence I feel no shame in asserting that this whole region engirdled by the moon, and the center of the earth, traverse this grand circle amid the rest of the planets in an annual revolution around the sun. Near the sun is the center of the universe. Moreover, since the sun remains stationary, whatever appears as a motion of the sun is really due rather to the motion of the earth.

Nine planets round the sun, only one does the sun embrace. Upon this watered one, so much we take for granted; So let us sleep outside tonight, lay down in our mother's arms, for here we can rest safely ... One sweet world around a star is spinning One sweet world And in her breath I'm swimming, and here we will rest in peace.

It used to be said that Pluto is a misfit. But now we know Earth is the misfit. This is the most populous class of planet in our solar system and we have never sent a mission to this class.

Please, amigo. We need you, Kimosabe, O Mighty Powerful One. We need you more than the earth rises in the west." The sun rises in the east, dickhead." Only if you're standing on the earth. If you're on the moon, the earth rises in the west.

I want to launch a globe into space just to mess with the astronauts.