But to carve the Grand Canyon, Earth required millions of years. To excavate Meteor Crater, the universe, using a sixty-thousand-ton asteroid traveling… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
If Earth ever suffers a runaway greenhouse effect (like what has happened on Venus), then our atmosphere would trap excess amounts of… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
Seventy percent of Earth's surface is water and over 99 percent is uninhabited, so you would expect nearly all impactors to hit… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
I want upon death to be buried, just like in the old days, where I decompose by the action of microorganisms, and… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
Trillions of years into the future, when all stars are gone...all parts of the cosmos will cool to the same temperature as… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
The chunks of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were so large, and were moving so fast, that each hit Jupiter with at least the… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
I remain fearless of airplanes after 9/11. But during a trip to Los Angeles on a Boeing 767, I couldn't keep my… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
Eventually, the Sun will swell to occupy the entire sky as its expansion subsumes the orbit of earth. Earth's surface temperature will… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
Something bad happened on both Mars with its dried-up watercourses and Venus with its runaway greenhouse effect. Could something bad happen on… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
When you're a hammer (as the saying goes), all your problems look like nails. If you're a meteorite expert pondering the sudden… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
The number of people in the world engaged in this search for catastrophic impactors totals one or two dozen. How long into… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
I don't want to go into space because of war. I think we would if it was triggered. If China said they want to… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
Quantum physics fluctuates all the time. But now the fluctuations are not just particles coming into and out of existence, which happens all the… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
In the movie, the stars above the ship bear no correspondence to any constellations in a real sky. Worse yet, while the heroine bobs...… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
... informed ignorance provides the natural state of mind for research scientists at the ever-shifting frontiers of knowledge. People who believe themselves ignorant of… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
If you seek only easy problems to solve, then ultimately, there'll be nothing about you to distinguish yourself from others. — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
The caricature of science is that we hold tight to the theories we have, and shun challenges to them. That's just not true. In… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
New generations of humans inherit the acquired discoveries of generations past, allowing cosmic insight to accumulate without limit. Each discovery of science therefore adds… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
I've said multiple times that the world's first trillionaire is going to be the person who exploits the resources of asteroids, the natural resources… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
They [scientists of centuries past] call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations,… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
We explore our environment, more than we are compelled to utter poetry, when we're toddlers. We start doing that later. Before that happens, every… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image
You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't… — Neil deGrasse Tyson Copy Share Image