Dimitar Sasselov Quotes
When we discover New Earth - a planet we could call home - the question of the 'plurality of worlds' will come front and center, reminding us yet again that we are not the center of the universe.
Sasselov, Dimitar. The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet. Basic Books, 2012.
The Roman Catholic Church had stultified scientific thinking for over a thousand years where differing with accepted church doctrine was not only discouraged but was dangerous. Hicletas—see {590328}—realized that the earth rotated around its own axis three centuries before Christ, and his view was in the literature to which learned people had access. Copernicus later communicated this idea to the Pope but in much more delicate terms—see {590327}. He did not have the problems that Galileo endured with the Church for several reasons. There were different men controlling the church, the printing press had been invented and Galileo published a book that many could read, the Protestant Reformation had really frightened the Church fathers who felt more vulnerable and less tolerant.
We know that our solar system will die in several billion years, but there are also other comic dangers that in the past have wiped out most life species and could do so again. Hawking and some others believe that NASA and other future efforts to develop space travel are critical to the long term survival of the human race.
Dimitar D. Sasselov (Bulgarian: Димитър Д. Съселов, born 1961) is a Bulgarian astronomer based in the United States. He is a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative. In 2002, Sasselov led a team that discovered the most distant planet in the Milky Way known at the time.
