Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

The original project began because we know the universe is expanding. Everybody had assumed that gravity would slow down the expansion of the universe and everything would come to a halt and collapse. The big surprise was it was actually speeding up.

One of the most exciting things about dark energy is that it seems to live at the very nexus of two of our most successful theories of physics: quantum mechanics, which explains the physics of the small, and Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, which explains the physics of the large, including gravity.

We know that the expansion of our universe is accelerating, which means a number called the cosmological constant must be positive.

General relativity is the cornerstone of cosmology and astrophysics. It has also provided the conceptual basis for string theory and other attempts to unify all the forces of nature in terms of geometrical structures.

We've known for a long time that the universe is expanding. But about 15 years ago, my colleagues and I discovered that it is expanding faster and faster. That is, the universe is accelerating, and that was not expected, but it is now attributed to this mysterious stuff called dark energy which seems to make up about 70 percent of the universe.

For years, my early work with Roger Penrose seemed to be a disaster for science. It showed that the universe must have begun with a singularity, if Einstein's general theory of relativity is correct. That appeared to indicate that science could not predict how the universe would begin.

From a scientific point of view, our mission is to seek answers to the fundamental questions about the universe. Many are open - we don't know about dark matter, which accounts for a quarter of the universe's matter, nor do we know why there's antimatter.

The dark energy is not exactly zero, but the first 122 decimal points are zero. That's crazy. That is really one of the craziest things we've ever discovered.

Dark energy is incredibly strange, but actually it makes sense to me that it went unnoticed, because dark energy has no effect on daily life, or even inside our solar system.

We're going to need a definitive quantum theory of gravity, which is part of a grand unified theory - it's the main missing piece.

They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.

My passion is to understand the non-linear dynamics of warped space-time, and the ideal venue for this is black-hole collisions.

If you consider the universe one second after the Big Bang, the expansion rate would have to have been just right to an accuracy of 15 decimal places, or else the universe would really not work.

Gravitational waves, because they are so imperturbable - they go through everything - they will tell you the most information you can get about the earliest instants that go on in the universe.

We're going to be seeing things from regions in the universe where Einstein is the whole story. Newton you can forget about.

The geometry, the content, and the fate of the universe are all intricately linked. If you know two, you can deduce the third.

And what we know, or think we know, about the universe of space and time is changing very quickly.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics.

It was only about sixty years ago that the expansion of the universe was first observed.

It now appears that the way the universe began can indeed be determined, using imaginary time.

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

People have contemplated the origin and evolution of the universe since before the time of Aristotle. Very recently, the era of speculation has given way to a time of science.

About the 50th hour, I was going to start thinking about the edge of the universe. Is there an edge? Is this an envelope we're living inside of, or no, does it go onto infinity in both time and space? And there's nothing like swimming for 50 hours in the ocean that gets you thinking about things like this.

If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size. On the other hand, if it had been greater by a part in a million, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for stars and planets to form.