It’s possible to gather light that’s older than our solar system.
We have the capability – physically, technically – to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts. We are now able to very slightly and subtly reshape the solar system in order to enhance human survival.
Estimates are that at least 70 per cent of all stars are accompanied by planets, and since the latter can occur in systems rather than as individuals (think of our own solar system), the number of planets in the Milky Way galaxy is of order one trillion.
Cassini was an international undertaking, led by NASA and the European Space Agency and designed to be, in every dimension, a dramatic advance over Voyager. At the size of a school bus, it was bigger than Voyager and outfitted with the most sophisticated scientific instruments ever carried into the outer solar system.
The public has an incredible capacity for appreciating the wonder of our planet, our solar system, our universe.
What I want to look at with Webb is what we call ice giants in our solar system – the planets Neptune and Uranus.
To settle space, we will have to develop the ability to harvest and utilize the resources of the solar system, such as ores, ice, and the rays of the sun itself at levels of efficiency that will transform our relationship to our own planet Earth.
The planets and moons of our solar system are blatantly visible because they reflect sunlight. Without the nearby Sun, these planets would be cryptic and dark on the sky.
What we expect to find, certainly in our own solar system, are probably simple single or multiple-cell forms of life. To get to intelligent life takes stability of conditions over huge, long periods of time.
We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there.
One of the implications of the discovery of the Kuiper Belt and its many small planets is that many scientists now think of the solar system as having not two but three zones.
Obviously I’d like NASA to follow their charter – the exploration of our solar system and beyond. I’d like to see people someday go to Mars.
The purpose of going to Mars is for humans to first begin to occupy, permanently, another planet in the solar system. The astronauts or pilgrims, whatever you might call them, are going to be very historically unique human beings.
The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.
The gas-giant planets in our solar system all have large moons.
Dark energy is incredibly strange, but actually it makes sense to me that it went unnoticed, because dark energy has no effect on daily life, or even inside our solar system.
Our solar system is actually a wild frontier, teeming with different, diverse places: planets and moons, millions of objects of ice and rock.
In ‘Cosmicomics,’ I came close to science fiction – I was inspired by cosmological subjects and the workings of the universe and invented a character who was a sort of witness to everything that was happening inside the solar system.
Man must at all costs overcome the Earth’s gravity and have, in reserve, the space at least of the Solar System.
I think that, a lot of times, people have this idea that the solar system is entirely explored, that we have sent spacecraft to every planet, we’ve taken beautiful pictures of everything, and that it’s kind of done.
The solar system is completely wide open. Almost anywhere we go, I’m sure we would learn a lot.
It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.
We really have the most beautiful planet in our solar system. None other can sustain life like we know it. None other has blue water and white clouds covering colorful landmasses filled with thriving, beautiful, living things like human beings.
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