Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm a strong advocate of new missions to Venus.
Fixing global warming is more important than astronomy.
The hallmark of the human species is great adaptability.
It's quite possible there's as much lightning on Venus as on Earth.
Mars does not belong to 'America,' nor to Earth, nor to human beings.
I will defend the NASA Earth Science Division with everything I've got.
There's something cool about being involved in new missions to other planets.
We don't know that Venus had oceans, but there's every reason to believe it did.
We can look out on an alien landscape that no one has seen before and find it beautiful.
Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.
I think Pluto has to be considered among the places in the solar system that are possible homes for life.
My high-school friends and I felt part of a community of smart, forward-looking space and technology freaks.
Whenever I see a nighttime picture of Earth from space, with its glowing lights, I am stirred by its beauty.
Our most valuable resources - creativity, communication, invention, and reinvention - are, in fact, unlimited.
It turns out one of my dad's best friends was Carl Sagan when I was little. They were both Harvard professors.
The story of our species is one of overcoming existential risk through new forms of cooperation and innovation.
I'd been politically active ever since my parents wheeled me in a stroller in a 'ban the bomb' march in Boston in 1963.
I think the best SF writers are very aware of what we, in the scientific community, are doing, thinking, and discovering.
The mature Anthropocene begins when we acquire the ability to live sustainably and become a lasting presence on this world.
A lot of the science fiction that I grew up reading was written when we still thought that Venus might be an oceanic planet.
Humans are possessed, to some degree, with the power of foresight. Yet we so often learn things the hard way, through disaster.
Earth is a stunningly lovely planet for so many reasons. Among these is the wondrous presence of curious, artful, inventive humanity.
Radiation is one of the important factors in evolution. It causes mutation, and some level of mutation is actually good for evolution.
Even cynical, selfish people will realize, one way or the other, that it's not in their self-interest to act in self-destructive ways.
Earth's biosphere gave birth to humans and our thoughts, which are now reshaping its planetary cycles. A planet with brains? Fancy that.
There are other planets besides the Earth and Mars. I'd like to remind you that studying Venus is vital to understanding life elsewhere.
The future peopling of Mars is much more than a scientific endeavor. It is a step of historic and spiritual importance for the human race.
We're going to stop looking at Earth from orbit because we don't like what we are seeing and the conclusions that leads us to? That's nonsense.
I'm an astrobiologist, and I come from a planetary science background, so in a very broad sense, I study the evolution of planetary environments.
Through space-based climate studies, my colleagues and I have learned that a stable and comfortable climate is not something to take for granted.
Responsible global behaviour is ultimately an act of self-preservation of, by, and for the global beast that modern technological humanity has become.
What I'm interested in is the conversations going on about the Anthropocene and what it means to view ourselves as a part of Earth's geological history.
Among the plausible niches for extraterrestrial life in our solar system, the clouds of Venus are among the most accessible and the least well explained.
We need to have a vision of the world we want to create so that we can see ourselves as collaborators with future generations in the project of shaping it.
As long as we can imagine a better path, of course we are obligated to seek it. This is why unwarranted pessimism about our future is actually irresponsible.
If we gutted NASA Earth Science, it wouldn't be NOAA or some other agency that would take the lead. It would be the Chinese and the Europeans and the Japanese.
I think that an advanced planetary civilization will modify their own planets to be more stable, to prevent asteroid impacts and dangerous climate fluctuations.
I do a lot of work with NASA and am involved in research projects studying planetary evolution, Earth-like planets, and potential conditions for life elsewhere.
In order to have a decent chance to be a communicating species, you would have to learn to think and plan and act over time scales of a century or a millennium.
What we should really be thinking about is what it would look like for a truly intelligent technological species to be interacting with their planet's atmosphere.
Even as a kid enthralled with science fiction, I wondered about the role of people in the long-term evolution of the Earth, the far future and the fate of humanity.
There's no question to my mind that saving our civilization and many other species is more important than our ability to do ground-based astronomy for a few decades.
Part of the point of SETI has always been a search for answers about our own cosmic potential and destiny. If 'they' are out there, it means that there may be hope for us.
As a young planet, Venus was losing hydrogen rapidly to space. The oceans boiled off, and after some period of time, perhaps 600 million years, there was no surface water.
I don't see it as coincidence that the great acceleration of the Anthropocene influences on Earth came during the same decades as our first exploration of the other planets.
I'd like to jump a couple hundred years into the future and work with the scientists who are getting back the first information from our probes to planets orbiting nearby stars.
Seriously, we should start taxing churches and have tax-exempt places for worship and study of nature and art. Charge ten bucks for Sunday services and make the Botanic Gardens free.
As a kid, I became a total SF geek. It started in the 5th grade with Asimov's 'Lucky Starr' series of what would now be called 'young adult' novels of adventures in the solar system.
There was a long history of people believing there was life on Venus. It was about the same size as Earth. It had clouds. It was commonly believed it was tropical - wet, hot and steamy.
Earth is going to lose its oceans in the future, just as Venus did in the past. How long planets retain their oceans is a function of distance from the sun, all other things being equal.