Planet

"Dilbert: And we know mass creates gravity because more dense planets have more gravity. Dogbert: How do we know which planets are more dense? Dilbert: They have more gravity. Dogbert: That's circular reasoning. Dilbert: I prefer to think of it as having no loose ends."

"I tell my students, with a feeling of pride that I hope they will share, that the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that make up ninety-nine per cent of our living substance were cooked in the deep interiors of earlier generations of dying stars. Gathered up from the ends of the universe, over billions of years, eventually they came to form, in part, the substance of our sun, its planets, and ourselves. Three billion years ago, life arose upon the earth. It is the only life in the solar system."

"Scientists themselves readily admit that they do not fully understand the consequences of our many-faceted assault upon the interwoven fabric of atmosphere, water, land and life in all its biological diversity. But things could also turn out to be worse than the current scientific best guess. In military affairs, policy has long been based on the dictum that we should be prepared for the worst case. Why should it be so different when the security is that of the planet and our long-term future?"

"One of the grandest generalizations formulated by modern biological science is that of the continuity of life; the protoplasmic activity within each living body now on earth has continued without cessation from the remote beginnings of life on our planet, and from that period until the present no single organism has ever arisen save in the form of a bit of living protoplasm detached from a pre-existing portion; the eternal flame of life once kindled upon this earth has passed from organism to organism, and is still, going on existing and propagating, incarnated within the myriad animal and plant forms of everyday life."

"A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth."

"It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, but that not every one is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so if every planet in the Universe has a population of zero then the entire population of the Universe must also be zero, and any people you may actually meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think that this to be the normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

"The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited."

"I remember on the trip home on Appolo 11, it suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."

"Outside intelligences, exploring the solar system with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris."

"Gauss calculated the elements of the planet Ceres and his analysis proved him to be the first of theoretical astronomers no less than the greatest of 'arithmeticians.'"

"The only truly alien planet is Earth."

"The fact that this chain of life existed [at volcanic vents on the seafloor] in the black cold of the deep sea and was utterly independent of sunlight—previously thought to be the font of all Earth's life—has startling ramifications. If life could flourish there, nurtured by a complex chemical process based on geothermal heat, then life could exist under similar conditions on planets far removed from the nurturing light of our parent star, the Sun."

"Copernicus, who rightly did condemn This oldest system, form'd a wiser scheme; In which he leaves the Sun at Rest, and rolls The orb terrestrial on its proper poles; Which makes the night and day by this career, And by its slow and crooked course the year. The famous Dane, who oft the modern guides, To earth and sun their Provinces divides: The earth's rotation makes the night and day, The sun revolving through th'eccliptic way Effects the various seasons of the year, Which in their turn for happy ends appear. This scheme or that, which pleases best, embrace, Still we the fountain of their motion trace. Kepler asserts these wonders may be done By the magnetic vertue of the sun, Which he, to gain his end, thinks fit to place Full in the center of that mighty space, Which does the spheres, where planets roll, include, And leaves him with attractive force endu'd. The sun, thus seated, by mechanic laws, The earth, and every distant planet draws; By which attraction all the planets found Within his reach, are turn'd in ether round."

"That the machine of Heaven is not a hard and impervious body full of various real spheres, as up to now has been believed by most people. It will be proved that it extends everywhere, most fluid and simple, and nowhere presents obstacles as was formerly held, the circuits of the Planets being wholly free and without the labour and whirling round of any real spheres at all, being divinely governed under a given law."

"There really are not any spheres in the heavens ... Those which have been devised by the experts to save the appearances exist only in the imagination, for the purpose of enabling the mind to conceive the otion which the heavenly bodies trace in their course and, by the aid of geometry, to determine the motion numerically through the use of arithmetic."

"I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reactions at a surface."

"In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns, no worse and no less than this globe of ours. For no reasonable mind can assume that heavenly bodies that may be far more magnificent than ours would not bear upon them creatures similar or even superior to those upon our human earth."

"The Builder of this Universe was wise, He plann’d all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and Æons by, Was—Heavens!—was thy small Nine-and-thirty Articles!"

"Most known extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been discovered using the radial velocity, or transit methods. Both are biased towards planets that are relatively close to their parent stars, and studies find that around 17–30% of solar-like stars host a planet. Gravitational microlensing, on the other hand, probes planets that are further away from their stars. Recently, a population of planets that are unbound or very far from their stars was discovered by microlensing. These planets are at least as numerous as the stars in the Milky Way."

"It’s so hard to balance in our minds the knowledge that ‘the world’ is mundanely ‘a planet.’ The former is so holy; the latter merely a science project."

"We will look upon the earth and her sister planets as being with us, not for us."

"And the mass starts into a million suns; Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issue from the first."

"In 1684 Dr Halley came to visit him at Cambridge, after they had been some time together, the Dr asked him what he thought the Curve would be that would be described by the Planets supposing the force of attraction towards the Sun to be reciprocal to the square of their distance from it. Sir Isaac replied immediately that it would be an Ellipsis, the Doctor struck with joy & amazement asked him how he knew it, why saith he I have calculated it, whereupon Dr Halley asked him for his calculation without any farther delay. Sr Isaac looked among his papers but could not find it, but he promised him to renew it, & then to send it him."

"From an entertainment point of view, the Solar System has been a bust. None of the planets turns out to have any real-estate potential, and most of them are probably even useless for filming Dune sequels."

"But what exceeds all wonders, I have discovered four new planets and observed their proper and particular motions, different among themselves and from the motions of all the other stars; and these new planets move about another very large star [Jupiter] like Venus and Mercury, and perchance the other known planets, move about the Sun. As soon as this tract, which I shall send to all the philosophers and mathematicians as an announcement, is finished, I shall send a copy to the Most Serene Grand Duke, together with an excellent spyglass, so that he can verify all these truths."

"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."

"I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn."

"We see it [the as-yet unseen, hypothetical new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration."

"I shall explain a System of the World differing in many particulars from any yet known, answering in all things to the common Rules of Mechanical Motions: This depends upon three Suppositions. First, That all Cœlestial Bodies whatsoever, have an attraction or gravitating power towards their own Centers, whereby they attract not only their own parts, and keep them from flying from them, as we may observe the Earth to do, but that they do also attract all the other Cœlestial bodies that are within the sphere of their activity; and consequently that not only the Sun and Moon have an influence upon the body and motion the Earth, and the Earth upon them, but that Mercury also Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter by their attractive powers, have a considerable influence upon its motion in the same manner the corresponding attractive power of the Earth hath a considerable influence upon every one of their motions also. The second supposition is this, That all bodies whatsoever that are put into a direct and simple motion, will continue to move forward in a straight line, till they are by some other effectual powers deflected and bent into a Motion, describing a Circle, Ellipse, or some other more compounded Curve Line. The third supposition is: That these attractive powers are so much the more powerful in operating, by how much the nearer the body wrought upon is to their own Centers. Now what these several degrees are I have not yet experimentally verified; but it is a notion, which if fully prosecuted as it ought to be, will mightily assist the Astronomer to reduce all the Cœlestial Motions to a certain rule, which I doubt will never be done true without it. He that understands the nature of the Circular Pendulum and Circular Motion, will easily understand the whole ground of this Principle, and will know where to find direction in Nature for the true stating thereof. This I only hint at present to such as have ability and opportunity of prosecuting this Inquiry, and are not wanting of Industry for observing and calculating, wishing heartily such may be found, having myself many other things in hand which I would first complete and therefore cannot so well attend it. But this I durst promise the Undertaker, that he will find all the Great Motions of the World to be influenced by this Principle, and that the true understanding thereof will be the true perfection of Astronomy."

"A rock or stone is not a subject that, of itself, may interest a philosopher to study; but, when he comes to see the necessity of those hard bodies, in the constitution of this earth, or for the permanency of the land on which we dwell, and when he finds that there are means wisely provided for the renovation of this necessary decaying part, as well as that of every other, he then, with pleasure, contemplates this manifestation of design, and thus connects the mineral system of this earth with that by which the heavenly bodies are made to move perpetually in their orbits."

"The art itself cannot philosophise While man does that, and sees, and keeps a wife And flies, and talks, and is extremely wise... Will our Philosophy to later Life Seem but a crudeness of the planet's youth, Our Wisdom but a parasite of Truth?"

"Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself."

"I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours."

"And if you want the exact moment in time, it was conceived mentally on 8th March in this year one thousand six hundred and eighteen, but submitted to calculation in an unlucky way, and therefore rejected as false, and finally returning on the 15th of May and adopting a new line of attack, stormed the darkness of my mind. So strong was the support from the combination of my labour of seventeen years on the observations of Brahe and the present study, which conspired together, that at first I believed I was dreaming, and assuming my conclusion among my basic premises. But it is absolutely certain and exact that the proportion between the periodic times of any two planets is precisely the sesquialterate proportion of their mean distances."

"Knox was engaged in a theological discussion with scientist John Scott Haldane. 'In a universe containing millions of planets,' reasoned Haldane, 'is it not inevitable that life should appear on at least one of them?' 'Sir,' replied Knox, 'if Scotland Yard found a body in your cabin trunk, would you tell them: 'There are millions of trunks in the world; surely one of them must contain a body? I think the would still want to know who put it there.'"

"The historian of science may be tempted to claim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. even more important, during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well."

"I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet."

"Faustus: How many heavens or spheres are there? Mephastophilis: Nine: the seven planets, the firmament, and the empyreal heaven. Faustus: But is there not coelum igneum, et crystallinum? Meph.: No Faustus, they be but fables. Faustus: Resolve me then in this one question: Why are not conjunctions, oppositions, aspects, eclipses all at one time, but in some years we have more, in some less? Meph.: Per inaequalem motum respectu totius. Faustus: Well, I am answered. Now tell me who made the world. Meph.: I will not. Faustus: Sweet Mephastophilis, tell me. Meph.: Move me not, Faustus. Faustus: Villain, have I not bound thee to tell me any thing? Meph.: Ay, that is not against our kingdom. This is. Thou are damn'd, think thou of hell. Faustus: Think, Faustus, upon God that made the world! Meph.: Remember this. Faustus: Ay, go, accursed spirit, to ugly hell!‘Tis thou has damned distressed Faustus’s soul. Is’t not too late."

"On a perfect planet such as might be acceptable to a physicist, one might predict that from its origin the diversity of life would grow exponentially until the carrying capacity, however defined, was reached. The fossil record on Earth, however, tells a very different story."

"For nature is a perpetual circulatory worker, generating fluids out of solids, and solids out of fluids, fixed things out of volatile, & volatile out of fixed, subtle out of gross, & gross out of subtle, Some things to ascend & make the upper terrestrial juices, rivers and the atmosphere; & by consequence others to descend for a requital to the former. And as the earth, so perhaps may the sun imbibe this spirit copiously to conserve his shining, & keep the Planets from receding further from him. And they that will, may also suppose, that this spirit affords or carries with it thither the solary fuel & material principle of light; And that the vast aethereal spaces between us, & the stars are for a sufficient repository for this food of the sun and planets."

"Thus far I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity. Indeed, this force arises from some cause that penetrates as far as the centers of the sun and planets without any diminution of its power to act, and that acts not in proportion to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles on which it acts (as mechanical causes are wont to do) but in proportion to the quantity of solid matter, and whose action is extended everywhere to immense distances, always decreasing as the squares of the distances."

"Seeing therefore the variety of Motion which we find in the World is always decreasing, there is a necessity of conserving and recruiting it by active Principles, such as are the cause of Gravity, by which Planets and Comets keep their Motions in their Orbs, and Bodies acquire great Motion in falling; and the cause of Fermentation, by which the Heart and Blood of Animals are kept in perpetual Motion and Heat; the inward Parts of the Earth are constantly warm'd, and in some places grow very hot; Bodies burn and shine, Mountains take fire, the Caverns of the Earth are blown up, and the Sun continues violently hot and lucid, and warms all things by his Light. For we meet with very little Motion in the World, besides what is owing to these active Principles. And it were not for these Principles the Bodies of the Earth, Planers, Comets, Sun, and all things in them would grow cold and freeze and become inactive masses; and all Putrefaction, Generation, Vegetation and Life would cease; and the Planets and Comets would not remain in their Orbs."

"That the squares of the periodic times are proportion to the cubes of the major-axes. These laws were discovered by Kepler from observations made on Mars and stated by analogy as general laws, which, although not rigidly true, are sufficiently near to the truth to have led to the discovery of the law of attraction of the bodies of the solar system. The deviation from complete accuracy is due to the facts, that the planets are not of inappreciable mass, that, in consequence, they disturb each other's orbits about the Sun, and, by their action on the Sun itself, cause the periodic time of each to be shorter than if the Sun were a fixed body, in the subduplicate ratio of the mass of the Sun to the sum of the masses of the Sun and Planet; these errors are appreciable although very small, since the mass of the largest of the planets, Jupiter, is less than 1/1000th of the Sun's mass."

"The spirits survey the heavens and the earth and all the harmonious motions of the universe. They see the heavenly bodies set in revolving whorls, which, whorl within whorl, combine to form the Spinning-whorl on the Spindle of Necessity; and the Goddess holds the spindle on her knee, and spins the thread which the Fates wind, unwind and cut. The heavenly bodies, or the spheres or whorls in which they lie, are arranged one within another in the following order: 1. The Fixed Stars. 2. Saturn. 3. Jupiter. 4. Mars. 5. Mercury. 6. Venus. 7. The Sun. 8. The Moon. This order is as good as any other that can be framed under a geocentric hypothesis."

"The whorls differ from one another in respect of "breadth of rim", the first and outermost whorl is that which has its circular rim the broadest, and the sixth whorl comes next to it in regard to breadth of rim; and, proceeding in order of breadth, the fourth whorl comes third, and the eighth fourth, and the seventh fifth, and the fifth sixth, and the third seventh, and the second eighth.' Thus we have now a new classification of the heavenly bodies, in the following sequence: 1. The Fixed Stars. 2. Venus. 3. Mars. 4. The Moon. 5. The Sun. 6. Mercury. 7. Jupiter. 8. Saturn."

"That very law which moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source; That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course."

"If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. If I throw a stick up in the air, it always falls down. If the sun sets in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so it becomes possible to figure things out. We can do science, and with it we can improve our lives."

"The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home."

"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."