Supernova Quotes

• A supernova is one of the most powerful explosions in the universe. It's so luminous, it can be seen across billions of light years. It releases as much energy in an instant as our sun will produce over its 10-billion-year lifetime.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Powerful, Light, Years

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• It has been said that great art is the night thought of man. It may emerge without warning from the soundless depths of the unconscious, just as supernovas may blaze up suddenly in the farther reaches of void space.

  Loren Eiseley

  Art, Night, Men

  Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.55, Library of America

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• What a dull universe it would be if everything in it conformed to our expectations, if it held nothing to surprise or baffle us or confound our common sense. A century ago no one foresaw the existence of black holes, an expanding universe, oceans on Jupiter's moons, or DNA. What could be more enriching than to know that we share a common origin with all living things, that we are kin to chimpanzees, redwoods and mollusks? And isn't it a source of wonder to realize that the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were created in the bellies of supernovas?

  Steven Pinker

  Ocean, Moon, Dna

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• We still don't know for sure what the trigger was, but since we've discovered meteorites with supernova dust, we do know that a violent explosion rocked our cosmic neighborhood at the time of our birth, and it's quite possible that without it, our stable, stately solar system would never exist at all.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Dust, Birth, Violent

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• All humans are brothers. We came from the same supernova

  Allan Sandage

  Brother, Humans

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• What is it that you contain? The dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia opening in your gut. Every minute, in each of you, a few million potassium atoms succumb to radioactive decay. The energy that powers these tiny atomic events has been locked inside potassium atoms ever since a star-sized bomb exploded nothing into being. Potassium, like uranium and radium, is a long-lived radioactive nuclear waste of the supernova bang that accounts for you. Your first parent was a star.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Stars, Light, Long

  Jeanette Winterson (2010). “Weight”, p.3, Canongate Books

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• There's one tiny little gap in the universe left, just about to close. And it takes a lot of power to send this projection. I'm in orbit around a supernova. I'm burning up a sun just to say good bye.

  Russell T Davies

  Goodbye, Orbit, Burning

  "Fictional character: The Doctor". TV Series "Doctor Who" ("Doomsday", 2006), www.imdb.com. (2005 - ).

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• I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.

  Robert Metcalfe

  Internet, Collapse

  "Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis: Meditations on Computer Systems Development". Book by Patrick McDermott, 2002.

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• Like a snowplow in overdrive, a supernova shockwave might sweep away any gas clouds in its path.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Clouds, Might, Path

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• at least nine-tenths of all the original reality ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit of a strain on things. Outside the boundaries of the universe lie the raw realities, the could-have-beens, the might-bes, the never-weres, the wild ideas, all being created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas. Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin, they can leak in.

  Terry Pratchett

  Wall, Lying, Reality

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• I'm never more aware of the limitations of language than when I try to describe beauty. Language can create its own loveliness, of course, but it cannot deliver to us the radiance we apprehend in the world, any more than a photograph can capture the stunning swiftness of a hawk or the withering power of a supernova... All that pictures or words can do is gesture beyond themselves toward the fleeting glory that stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing.

  Scott Sanders

  Heart, Trying, Fleeting

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• I think there's a myth that people feel, that people of success are never fearful, that we're never challenged, that we have some supernova - no, we're like everybody else.

  Robin Roberts

  Thinking, People, Myth

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The star [Tycho's supernova] was at first like Venus and Jupiter, giving pleasing effects; but as it then became like Mars, there will next come a period of wars, seditions, captivity and death of princes, and destruction of cities, together with dryness and fiery meteors in the air, pestilence, and venomous snakes. Lastly, the star became like Saturn, and there will finally come a time of want, death, imprisonment and all sorts of sad things.

  Tycho Brahe

  Stars, War, Science

  "Patrick Moore's Data Book of Astronomy". p. 336, 2011.

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• If we analyse the supernova data by assuming the Copernican principle is correct and get out something unphysical, I think we should start questioning the Copernican principle…. Whatever our theoretical predilections, they will in the end have to give way to the observational evidence.

  George F. R. Ellis

  Thinking, Data, Giving

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• With all reserve we advance the view that a supernova represents the transition of an ordinary star into a neutron star consisting mainly of neutrons. Such a star may possess a very small radius and an extremely high density. As neutrons can be packed much more closely than ordinary nuclei and electrons, the gravitational packing energy in a cold neutron star may become very large, and under certain conditions may far exceed the ordinary nuclear packing fractions.

  Fritz Zwicky

  Stars, Science, Views

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• There's nothing perplexing to me about a leafy shrub evolving out of the big bang, but that the post office exists because carbon exploded out of a supernova is a phenomenon so outrageous it makes my head twitch.

  Steve Toltz

  Office, Bangs, Shrubs

  Steve Toltz (2008). “A fraction of the whole”

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• From his observations, he concluded that it [Tycho's supernova] was not some kind of comet or a fiery meteor, whether these be generated beneath the Moon or above the Moon, but that it is a star shining in the firmament itself - one that has never previously been seen before our time, in any age since the beginning of the world.

  Tycho Brahe

  Stars, Science, Moon

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• I don't mind being called Supernova. If one nickname is going to stick, that's not a bad one!

  Natalia Vodianova

  Mind, Nicknames, Sticks

  "Natalia Vodianova: Moscow's poster girl". Interview with Deborah Rivers, www.cnn.com. May 7, 2009.

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• Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.

  Robert Metcalfe

  Growth, Internet, Predictions

  "Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis: Meditations on Computer Systems Development". Book by Patrick Mcdermott, 2002.

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• The Doctor: This is bad, I don't like this. [kicks console and yells in pain] Never use force, you just embarrass yourself. Unless you're cross, in which case... always use force! Amy: Shall I run and get the manual? The Doctor: I threw it in a supernova. Amy: You threw the manual in a supernova? Why? The Doctor: Because I disagreed with it! Now stop talking to me when I'm cross!

  Steven Moffat

  Running, Pain, Doctors

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• Full Disclosure: I hate David with the passion of a thousand fiery suns all going to supernova at the same time

  Robin Wasserman

  Hate, Passion, Sun

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• These neutrino observations are so exciting and significant that I think we're about to see the birth of an entirely new branch of astronomy: neutrino astronomy. Supernova explosions that are invisible to us because of dust clouds may occur in our galaxy as often as once every 10 years, and neutrino bursts could give us a way to study them.

  John N. Bahcall

  Thinking, Clouds, Dust

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• Ski boots are the worst. Solid plastic. They'll be around till the sun goes supernova.

  Douglas Coupland

  Boots, Sun, Plastic

  "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture". Book by Douglas Coupland, 1991.

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• Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.

  Michio Kaku

  Life, Science, Men

  "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension". Book by Michio Kaku, March 24, 1994.

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• Star Wars' is such a phenomenal global supernova that anything that gets said about it becomes kind of fact and gospel, and then taken by the legions of fans who are so excited to have more 'Star Wars,' that they roll off on all sorts of flights of fancy.

  Seth Green

  Stars, War, Taken

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