Neil deGrasse

Neil deGrasse
bring capacity cosmic edge great land occasion people unfolding
'Cosmos' is an occasion to bring everything that I have, all of my capacity to communicate. We may go to the edge of the universe, but we're going to land right on you: in your heart, in your soul, in your mind. My goal is to have people know that they are participants in this great unfolding cosmic story.
cosmic leading nations others perspective war
You can't come away with this cosmic perspective thinking that you are better than others and want to fight. That's why you'll never have astrophysicists leading nations into war.
cosmic illuminate
It may be that our cosmic curiosity... is a genetically-encoded force that we illuminate when we look up and wonder.
across assert cosmic discovery given god history lies religious scientific shows tends urge
So the history of discovery, particularly cosmic discovery, but discovery in general, scientific discovery, is one where at any given moment, there's a frontier. And there tends to be an urge for people, especially religious people, to assert that across that boundary, into the unknown, lies the handiwork of God. This shows up a lot.
discovery appetite cosmic
There's no denying the public's appetite for cosmic discovery.
access artists canvas changed frontier generation paint sit sort talk team
Modern-day access has completely changed how we talk about and think about the frontier of the cosmos. This is a modern-day incarnation of what used to be a team of artists who would sit there with a canvas and sort of paint up something that was described to them, to be photographed and put in the sky. This is a new generation of the representation of the frontier of science.
bullet miss
It's a bullet that will just miss us.
clear generation goes
It's a collaboration that goes clear to Japan. It's a new generation of representations of the sky.
alive natural result
Pretty much every plant and animal alive today is the result of eons of natural cross-breeding.
appetite bit geek inner million people tells wake
Every day, I wake up and I say, 'Why... how... did I end up with 1.7 million Twitter followers?' It's freaky to me, every day, but that tells me that there's an appetite out there that had previously been underserved. There's an inner geek in us all, an inner bit of curiosity that people are discovering, and they like it.
oldest people second study time
I study the universe. It's the second oldest profession. People have been looking up for a long time.
almost driver gain handy history investment itself maintain manifested nasa potent throughout urge view
Fortunately, there's another handy driver that has manifested itself throughout the history of cultures. The urge to want to gain wealth. That is almost as potent a driver as the urge to maintain your security. And that is how I view NASA going forward - as an investment in our economy.
deem equally life likely vastly
If we find life out there, and it's not us, we will deem it not intelligent. But what may be equally as likely is that we find life that's vastly more intelligent than we are. If that's the case, we are putty in their hands.
business crosses orbit
Pluto's orbit is so elongated that it crosses the orbit of another planet. Now that's... you've got no business doing that if you want to call yourself a planet. Come on, now! There's something especially transgressive about that.