Fun_People Archive
19 Jan
Cosmology Quotes

Date: Fri, 19 Jan 96 19:06:42 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Cosmology Quotes

[The recent discoveries of planets orbiting three stars (other than Sol) has  
brought to a close the era in which cosmologists had but a single planetary  
system as a model (a sample of size 1 is not very significant statistically).   
Now at least we know that Sol's planets are not complete anomalies.  Will that  
change cosmology much?  Well, let's see what cosmologists had to say before  
these discoveries...  -psl]

Forwarded-by: TomRawson@aol.com
Forwarded-by: rebyitz@netcom.com (Yitz Etshalom)
<quite a few forwards removed>


QUOTES ON THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

Carl Zwanzig: "Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark
side, and it holds the universe together...."

Douglas Adams: "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody
discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already
happened."

Albert Einstein: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

Unknown: "Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting
thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things."

Edward P. Tryon: "In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the
modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen
from time to time."

John Andrew Holmes: "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with
one trifling exception, is composed of others."

Max Frisch: "Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man
doesn't have to experience it."

Kilgore Trout: "The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

Woody Allen: "I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when
it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown."

Douglas Adams: "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a
lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

William J. Broad: "The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the
universe seems to be missing."

Rich Cook: "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving
to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to
produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

Fred Hoyle: "There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know
what it's a plan for."

Ray Bradbury: "We are an impossibility in an impossible universe."

Christopher Morley: "My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated
but not signed."

Edward Chilton: "I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing.
It's not holding a charge."

Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson): "The surest sign that intelligent life
exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."

© 1996 Peter Langston