Astronomical Odds Quotes

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

And as I have always said, the only thing more scary than knowing we are not alone in the universe is knowing we are alone in the universe.

Data from orbiting telescopes like NASA's Kepler Mission hint that the tally of habitable planets in our galaxy is many billion. If E.T.'s not out there, then Earth is more than merely special - it's some sort of miracle.

So the laws of good driving forbade you to go off the magic ribbon except in extreme emergencies. You were ethically entitled to several inches of margin at the right-hand edge; and the man approaching you was entitled to an equal number of inches; which left a remainder of inches between the two projectiles as they shot by. It sounds risky as one tells it, but the heavens are run on the basis of similar calculations, and while collisions do happen, they leave time enough in between for universes to be formed, and successful careers conducted by men of affairs.

The bottom line is, like, one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up. That's a fantastically large percentage. That means in our galaxy, there's on the order of tens of billions of Earth-like worlds.

Wonder if there is life on another planet? Let's suppose there is. Suppose further, that only one star in a trillion has a planet that could support life. If that were the case, then there would be at least 100 million planets that harbored life.

One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the night sky, it makes sense that someone is looking back at us.

If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible.