How The Planetary Systems Work Quotes

It is interesting that we know how the world and the planetary systems work, but we don't know how we think and why we are conscious. ~ Debasish Mridha

One of the many things I do not understand about Americans is this: what is it like to be a citizen of a superpower, to maintain democratically the means of planetary extinction. I wonder how this contributes to the dreamlife of America, a dreamlife that is so deep and troubled. ~ Martin Amis

It is impossible to understand how millions & millions of people all obey a sickly collection of gentlemen that call themselves Government! The word, I expect, frightens people. It is a form of planetary hypnosis, & very unhealthy. It has been going on for years, I said. And it only occurred to relatively few to disobey & make what they call revolutions. If they won their revolutions, which they occasionally did, they made more governments, sometimes more cruel & stupid than the last. Men are very difficult to understand, said Carmella. Let's hope they all freeze to death. I am sure it would be very pleasant & healthy for human beings to have no authority whatever. They would have to think for themselves, instead of always being told what to do & think by advertisements, cinemas, policemen, & parliaments. ~ Leonora Carrington

The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science, the very latest controversies, are worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like 'General Relativity still governing planetary orbits' or 'Phlogiston theory remains false'? By the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. ~ Carl Sagan

To doubt that life evolved, even if some of the details described in this book may yet prove wrong, is to doubt the convergence of evidence, from molecules to men, from bacteria to planetary systems. It is to doubt the evidence of biology, and its concordance with physics and chemistry, geology and astronomy. It is to doubt the veracity of experiment and observation, to doubt the testing in reality. It is, in the end, to doubt reality. ~ Nick Lane

From the beginning, man could look up at a vast universe dotted by innumerable stars to find every evidence that he was nothing. This evidence only grows stronger as science and technology record an expanse of galaxies filled with planetary solar systems beyond any visible end. Man is but a grain of sand lost on an endless seashore, and yet he believes with conviction in his own greatness. He is either a divine soul intuitively aware of his inherent, limitless potential - or he is a blind fool. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

We need to raise the level of our game in terms of explaining the planetary warming by infrared absorption of CO2 etc. The missing area of understanding seems to be the actual physical mechanism. Lets target an explanation at an audience that has taken 1 year each of undergraduate physics and chemistry, plus calculus. Once we have something that is convincing at this level, we can work on how to communicate this to the interested public (i.e. those that hang out in the climate blogosphere). Willis Eschenbach's help is needed in translating this for the WUWT crowd. ~ Judith Curry

Because our own solar system has planets moving in nice circles, astronomers naturally assumed that the balls of dust and hydrogen and helium gas that become solar systems condensed evenly. We now realize that it is more likely that gravity compresses them in a haphazard, random way, resulting in planets that move in elliptical or irregular orbits that may intersect or collide with one another. This is imprtant because it may be that only solar systems with circular planetary orbits like ours are conducive to life. ~ Michio Kaku

The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st ~ Carl Sagan

Here's the story of how Pluto lost its planetary status and was demoted to an ice ball in the outer solar system. It's also about my role in this at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Our problems are solvable if they are clearly defined. To do so, we need to monitor our planetary life support systems the way doctors monitor a patient's vital signs and then use that information to protect ecosystem services as though our lives depend on it, because they do. ~ Edith Widder

For many centuries, humans have speculated that there might be planetary systems around other stars and that there could be extraterrestrial life there and even intelligent being. However, those were simply speculations, and now we have evidence for the first part of these ideas. ~ George Smoot

Seventeen more days," Jessi breathed wonderingly. "God, you must be climbing the . . . er, walls . . . or whatever's in there, huh?"
"Aye."
"So, just what is in there, anyway?" She tested the glass by shaking it gently, and deemed it secure enough. It shouldn't slide now.
"Stone," he said flatly.
"And what else?"
"Stone. Gray. Of varying sizes." His voice dropped to a colorless monotone. "Fifty-two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven stones. Twenty-seven
thousand two hundred and sixteen of them
are a slightly paler gray than the rest. Thirty-six thousand and four are more rectangular than square. There are nine hundred and eighteen that have a
vaguely hexagonal shape. Ninety-two of
them have a vein of bronze running through the face. Three are cracked. Two paces from the center is a stone that protrudes slightly above the rest, over which I tripped for the first few
centuries. Any other questions?"
Jessi flinched as his words impacted her, taking her breath away. Her chest and throat felt suddenly tight. Uh, yeah, like, how did you stay sane in
there? What kept you from going stark raving mad? How did you survive over a thousand years in such a hell?
She didn't ask because it would have been like asking a mountain why it was still standing, as it had been since the dawn of time, perhaps reshaped in subtle ways, but there, always there. Barring cataclysmic planetary upheaval, forever there. The man was strong ~ Karen Marie Moning

Is Lavos a selfish conqueror of the world, or a planetary farmer simply following its instincts? How sentient is Lavos, and if it can speak to us, why won't it? Do apiarists palaver with their bees, or do they just mind the hives and collect the honey? It's painful to imagine our species as insects, as fodder for something bigger, more powerful. Something that could plummet from above and ruin us in the blink of an eye. ~ Michael P. Williams

The earth will support anything that supports life. What I have found after a soul retrieval is that one cannot "numb out" anymore. Each and every one of us must make personal and planetary decisions to stop abusing life. Whether a person a has to give up an abusive relationship, take a more active political role, or increase awareness of how we continue to abuse our environment, we all now have to be responsible. Being responsible means responding to what is needed. We find a need to wake up and change our reality to a stance of power ... ~ Sandra Ingerman

The planet isn't improvising, it's creating dynamic tensions between complex living systems in a planetary choreography, a balancing act between physical, chemical, biological, environmental, and human components. ~ DJ Spooky

Human life grows cheaper with every mewling, puking infant that is born. Any form of birth control, no matter how unjust or extreme, is preferable to that tyranny exercised so criminally now by those who, in their filth, stupidity, rut and obnoxious lust, blindly and selfishly birth endlessly forth their disgusting progeny in chaotic, cancerous growth, shoving and forcing the guilty in with the innocent in this already over-stuffed planetary rat-box of accelerating madness and asphyxiation. ~ E.E. Rehmus

His laws changed all of physics and astronomy. His laws made it possible to calculate the mass of the sun and planets. The way it's done is immensely beautiful. If you know the orbital period of any planet, say, Jupiter or the Earth and you know its distance to the Sun; you can calculate the mass of the Sun. Doesn't this sound like magic?

We can carry this one step further - if you know the orbital period of one of Jupiter's bright moons, discovered by Galileo in 1609, and you know the distance between Jupiter and that moon, you can calculate the mass of Jupiter. Therefore, if you know the orbital period of the moon around the Earth (it's 27.32 days), and you know the mean distance between the Earth and the moon (it's about 200,039 miles), then you can calculate to a high degree of accuracy the mass of the Earth.

… But Newton's laws reach far beyond our solar system. They dictate and explain the motion of stars, binary stars, star clusters, galaxies and even clusters of galaxies. And Newton's laws deserve credit for the 20th century discovery of what we call dark matter.

His laws are beautiful. Breathtakingly simple and incredibly powerful at the same time. They explain so much and the range of phenomena they clarify is mind boggling. By bringing together the physics of motion, of interaction between objects and of planetary movements, Newton brought a new kind of order to astronomical measurements, showing how, what had been a jumble of con ~ Walter Lewin

I think it's fantastically narcissistic to believe that in the entire universe, with all of the planetary systems that we've already discovered and the countless others that are out there, that we are the only forms of life. ~ Ian Bremmer

There is no doubt that Earth Central, the planetary and sector AIs, and even some ship and drone AIs are capable, without acquiring additional processing space, of setting up synergetic systems within themselves that result in an exponential climb in intelligence (mathematically defined as climbing beyond all known scales within minutes). So why not? Ask then why a human, capable of learning verbatim the complete works of Shakespeare, instead drinks a bottle of brandy, then giggles a lot and falls over. ~ Neal Asher

Part of what drives us to explore and discover is the intangible: expanding our horizons, feeding our curiosity, finding all those unexpected things, and trying to answer those profound questions discussed in previous chapters, like how did the universe begin? How did life begin? Are we alone? ~ Nancy Atkinson

Colonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate. ~ Poul Anderson

Bean also saw how the man's body moved inside his clothes, with a kind of contained strength that made his clothes seem like Kleenex, he could rip through the fabric just by tugging at it a little, because nothing could hold him in except his own self-control. ~ Orson Scott Card

It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they? ~ Alan Cumming

One of the most powerful and prophetic analysts was Karl Marx. He showed how work can alienate a person from their nature and potential. Certain work can dull and darken human presence ... the linear mind can miss its gift ... Perception is crucial to understanding. ~ John O'Donohue

I know I'm guilty of and I think a lot of people are guilty of sort of getting starry-eyed with love and sort of looking over the bad things and keep going and you don't really prepare for how much work marriage really is. ~ John Krasinski

Don't cover your cracks; that's how the light gets in. Don't cover your wounds; that's how your light pours out. Don't unweird yourself. Take up space enough for all the parts of you to come together -- the awful, the beautiful, the awe-inspiring, the wonderful and the strange. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Let me stay over," he said. "No. I have things to get ready for tomorrow. I teach a couple of classes on Monday and Thursday mornings and keep office hours for students in the afternoons. Then I work my twenty-four-hour shifts in Redding on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Tomorrow starts a real busy week and I - " "Okay," he said. "I'll watch TV while you get your stuff together." "No. You'll seduce me and I have a child in the house." "Gee, how do you suppose all the families with more than one child managed to do that?" "Those first children were used to their mothers and fathers sleeping in the same bed, but Rosie's not. Sometimes she crawls in with me in the night." "I have sweatpants in my duffel. I'll sleep in those," he tried. "No." "Can I have the couch?" "No. Because I know you and you'll seduce me. I think the only thing more important to you than sex is air. Now be on your good behavior. She isn't even asleep yet." "We ~ Robyn Carr

The only reason that the Vikings settled in Vinland is because we decided to make a motion picture showing how the Vikings settled in Vinland. ~ Harry Harrison

He knew then how the dull flesh of man can be like fire ~ Arthur Machen

We have been seduced by sound bites. It is difficult to imagine how we are going to have an intelligent conversation around complex theopolitical issues as long as the average news consumer in America is willing to be sound-bite driven. We face a sorry state of affairs in our culture when few people seem willing to take the time for nuanced discussion on the complicated challenges we face. Politicians of all parties have been willing to foster this sound-bite mentality because it has worked for them. Most Americans work hard and are faced with too little time and too many distractions to study the issues well enough to make an informed judgment on them. As long as news consumers are willing to be manipulated by sound bites and are unwilling to commit the time to understand the complexities, we will continue to see artificial and simplistic distinctions drive too much of our conversation, resulting in divisions and disagreements that rarely get at the substantive issues. ~ Charles E. Gutenson

I don't know how the heart withstands it. ~ Jandy Nelson

On the one hand we want to preserve the integrity of the judicial branch, and we want to talk about judicial independence, and how damaging and dangerous it is when Donald Trump calls out Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel. And at the same time, at the end of the day, judges work for us and we can recall them and we can impeach them. ~ Dahlia Lithwick

It wasn't only my friends who suffered from female rivalry. I remember when I was just sixteen years old, during spring vacation, being whisked off to an early lunch by my best friend's brother, only to discover, to my astonishment and hurt, that she was expecting some college boys to drop by and didn't want me there to compete with her. When I started college at Sarah Lawrence, I soon noticed that while some of my classmates were indeed true friends, others seemed to resent that I had a boyfriend. It didn't help that Sarah Lawrence, a former girls' school, included very few straight men among its student body--an early lesson in how competing for items in short supply often brings out the worst in women.

In graduate school, the stakes got higher, and the competition got stiffer, a trend that continued when I went on to vie for a limited number of academic jobs. I always had friends and colleagues with whom I could have trusted my life--but I also found women who seemed to view not only me but all other female academics as their rivals.

This sense of rivalry became more painful when I divorced my first husband. Many of my friends I depended on for comfort and support suddenly began to view me as a threat. Some took me out to lunch to get the dirt, then dropped me soon after. I think they found it disturbing that I left my unhappy marriage while they were still committed to theirs. For other women, the threat seemed more immediate--twice I was told in ~ Susan Shapiro Barash

One of my suppliers told me, "Ray, you know you aren't in the hamburger business at all. You're in the french-fry business. I don't know how the livin' hell you do it, but you've got the best french fries in town, and that's what's selling folks on your place. ~ Ray Kroc

Hey, I got an idea, let's go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let's go and experience the art of the cinema. Let's begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we're gonna have it haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let's go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let's catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we'll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let's lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it's going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let's go see it four times in one year. And let's see Woodstock three times in one year and let's see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let's see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let's sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler's List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema. ~ Tom Hanks

1:145-146
NO SURE SENSE

Say: No one knows the unseen except God (27:65).

With that text I put this question: How do you feel about doing work that brings no benefit to you or anyone? Aren't you always aware of a destination when you walk out your door? Do you ever walk out, look around in all directions, then go back into your house and sit there with no purpose, for no reason?

You often plan work without knowing what will come of it. You plant seeds with no guarantee they will sprout. You enter into a business deal with no sure sense it will make profit. Many do not reach the point they move toward, but that doesn't man they stop trying.

Certainty comes only with work we do in the invisible, but we cannot know that. Journeys taken and seeds planted there never disappoint. The saints and hermits and prophets might be able to give us some of their confidence if we could work along with them. ~ Bahauddin

Each of us carries within us a worldview, a set of assumptions about how the world works - what some call a paradigm - that forms the very questions we allow ourselves to ask, and determines our view of future possibilities. ~ Frances Moore Lappe

He wondered how the Attolians thought Eugenides had managed to become king if he was the idiot they assumed him to be. Perhaps because they had never seen him as the Thief, with his head thrown back and a glint in his eye that made the hair on the back of a man's neck rise up. ~ Megan Whalen Turner