Quotes by "Neil deGrasse Tyson"
In 2002, having spent more than three years in one residence for the first time in my life, I got called for jury duty. I show up on time, ready to serve. When we get to the voir dire, the lawyer says to me, âI see youâre an astrophysicist. Whatâs that?â I answer, âAstrophysics is the laws of physics, applied to the universeâthe Big Bang, black holes, that sort of thing.â Then he asks, âWhat do you teach at Princeton?â and I say, âI teach a class on the evaluation of evidence and the relative unreliability of eyewitness testimony.â Five minutes later, Iâm on the street. A few years later, jury duty again. The judge states that the defendant is charged with possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine. It was found on his body, he was arrested, and he is now on trial. This time, after the Q&A is over, the judge asks us whether there are any questions weâd like to ask the court, and I say, âYes, Your Honor. Why did you say he was in possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine? That equals 1.7 grams. The âthousandâ cancels with the âmilli-â and you get 1.7 grams, which is less than the weight of a dime.â Again Iâm out on the street.
At New York City's Rose Center of Earth and Space, we display a timeline spiral of the Universe that begins at the Big Bang and unfolds 13.8 billion years. Uncurled, it's the length of a football field. Every step you take spans 50 million years. You get to the end of the ramp, and you ask, where are we? Where is the history of our human species? The entire period of time, from a trillion seconds ago to today, from graffiti-prone cave dwellers until now, occupies only the thickness of a single strand of human hair, which we have mounted at the end of that timeline. You think we live long lives, you think civilizations last a long time, but not from the view of the cosmos itself.
It's not as though we're down here on Earth and the rest of the universe is out there. To begin with, we're genetically connected to each other and to all other life-forms on Earth. We're mutual participants in the biosphere. We're also chemically connected to all the other life-forms we have yet to discover. They, too, would use the same elements we find in our periodic table. They do not and cannot have some other periodic table. So we're genetically connected to each other; we're molecularly connected to other objects in the universe; and we're atomically connected to all matter in the cosmos. For me, that is a profound thought. It is even spiritual. Science , enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates , not denigrates, the ego.