Larry Wall Quotes

Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue.

The universe is very big - there's about 100,000 million galaxies in the universe, so that means an awful lot of stars. And some of them, I'm pretty certain, will have planets where there was life, is life, or maybe will be life. I don't believe we're alone.

I think a scientist's job is to explore the Universe, to explore the cosmos around us. People always want to know - why is that useful? Well, on just pure fundamental grounds, on some level it's like art, it's like umm, music, it's aesthetics, it's like philosophy. You want to know where you are in the Universe.

Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.

It's an unusual opportunity, a chance for so many people to share in the excitement and the fun of the fact that we may be on to hints as to what the Universe is made out of. I guess the whole point of a prize like this is to be able to get that out into the community.

No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.

That's what Hubble can do for us. It can tell us whether the universe is expanding forever or if one day it's going to come back together.

We could raise prodigious cities and create nations, and explore the universe.

Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it.

I think the universe is just so big that there has to be something else out there.

'First Light' is nonfiction, a true story about astronomers who are looking for light coming from the edge of the universe. It tells how science is really done - and science is a lot weirder and more human than most people realize.

The universe is a great mystery.

I will fight in the United States Senate this year to fund a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008, a mission that would potentially increase Hubble's power and efficiency by a factor of 10 and allow us to look back almost to the beginning of the universe.

The universe at large is full of questions that we still don't know anything about, and there will be always young people, brilliant, who are going to make new discoveries.

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

There are many in the field of cosmology, who believe as I do, that finding ways to travel great distances will be essential to keeping human kind alive in an aging universe.

We know very little about the universe. I personally don't believe it's uniform and the same everywhere. That's like saying the earth is flat.

The natural phenomenon of the universe is so mind-blowing, but you have to know about it. You have to be curious. You've got to find it on your own. If you're lucky, you do.

The book that blew the doors off the house, grabbing me with its breathtakingly deep and irresistible view of the universe and our relation to it, was 'Intelligent Life in the Universe' by I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan. I recall an enchanting all-nighter completing a college homework assignment to read the first chapter.

Hubble has really opened our eyes to what the universe is made of, its structure, and has helped us learn how little we know about the universe.

Let's teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome - and even comforting - than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.

Fred Hoyle was one of the first scientists to become famous on television and radio. It was because he told a dramatic story about the universe - about how amazing it is and the extraordinary discoveries that astronomers like him were making.

I was a science fiction geek from an early age, enthralled by the questions of life in the universe. As I got older, I learned that space exploration was real. I wanted to get involved in that. I knew I wanted to be a scientist.

We have this yearning to know the answers to the big questions about space and why we're here; we can't evolve fast enough to figure these answers out on our own, but we can do it through artificial intelligence. But there's also some very scary downsides that could come if we don't put the right safety precautions in there.

Everything we know about the universe is studied by using telescopes or other instruments that look at visible light, infrared, ultraviolet or X-ray - different wavelengths of electromagnetic interactions. Only 4 percent of what's in the universe gives off electromagnetic radiation, so we don't have any handle on the rest.