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Life Quotes by Paul Davies

39 Life quotes by Paul Davies

All Life quotes Paul Davies’s page

The origin of life remains one of science’s biggest mysteries, and Davies points out that studying cancer could teach astrobiologists about life’s fundamentals. He also describes how a physicist sees living things as a kind of miracle, while he himself stays a cheerful pessimist, expecting the worst but staying upbeat.

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The Goldilocks Enigma is the idea that everything in the universe is just right for life, like the porridge in the fairy…

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“A really big question is why the universe is fit for life; it looks like it has been ‘fixed up’.”

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The origin of life is one of the great outstanding mysteries of science.

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I always look on the black side of life. That way, you won't be disappointed and I'm cheerful if it doesn't work…

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The secret of life does not lie in its chemical basis . . . Life succeeds precisely because it evades chemical imperatives.

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To a physicist life looks nothing short of a miracle. It's just amazing what living things can do.

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Studying cancer could provide huge insights for astrobiologists into the nature of life itself.

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Most research into life's murky origin has been carried out by chemists. They've tried a variety of approaches in their attempts to…

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It's only fashion that has said the pendulum has swung from extreme skepticism about extraterrestrial life to extreme credulity. The truth is…

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Scientists have no agreed theory of the origin of life - plenty of scenarios, conjectures and just-so stories, but nothing with solid…

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If we're looking for intelligence in the universe I think everybody assumes that this has to start with life and so the…

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No planet is more earth-like than Earth itself, so if life really does pop up readily in earth-like conditions, then surely it…

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If we do discover more than one type of life on Earth, we can be fairly certain that the universe is teeming…

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No intelligent supervisor, no mystic force, no conscious controlling agency swings the molecules into place at the right time, chooses the appropriate…

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In the 1990s I began to study the prospects that life could spread from Mars to Earth or maybe Earth to Mars…

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A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as…

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I suppose my interest in looking for life elsewhere in the universe really dates back to my teens. What teenager doesn't look…

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What we want is another sample of life, which is not on our tree of life at all. All life that we've…

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We might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society…

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I should say we know that there are many, many other Earths out there. We're almost certain that there will be upwards…

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Wheeler hopes that we can discover, within the context of physics, a principle that will enable the universe to come into existence…

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Cancer is not something confined to human beings. It's found in all multi cellular organisms where the adult cells proliferate, so it's…

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An argument often given for why Earth couldn't host another form of life is that once the life we know became established,…

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“The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere…

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“Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very…

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The way life manages information involves a logical structure that differs fundamentally from mere complex chemistry. Therefore chemistry alone will not explain…

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A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing at the big crunch. Its glorious few zillion…

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Cancer is like another form of life. It's closely related to healthy life. A healthy body is one form of life. Cancer…

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Searching for alternative life on Earth might seem misconceived, because there is excellent evidence that every kind of life so far studied…

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Most life on Earth is microbes. we've only just scratched the surface of the microbial realm. Probably less than .1% of microbes…

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Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit…

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Science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview. ..even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of…

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“Why is nature so ingeniously, one might even say suspiciously, friendly to life? What do the laws of physics care about life…

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Should we find a second form of life right here on our doorstep, we could be confident that life is a truly…

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We know that within the solar system is very unlikely there will be anything more advanced than microbial life, but if we…

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When I was a student almost nobody thought there was any life beyond Earth. Today it's fashionable to say that there is…

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In the frantic search for an elusive 'cure,' few researchers stand back and ask a very basic question: why does cancer exist?…

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So how can we test the idea that the transition from nonlife to life is simple enough to happen repeatedly? The most…

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If you get a drill and drill down 5km beneath the ground, it's teeming with life - millions of tiny living fossils.…

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More by Paul Davies

“When I was a child, I often used to lie awake at night, in fearful anticipation of some unpleasant event the following day, such…

So how can we test the idea that the transition from nonlife to life is simple enough to happen repeatedly? The most obvious and…

I think if we're going to send messages to the stars then it needs a great deal of thought that it's something that should…

Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental 'superlaws,' but the superlaws themselves must still…

Studying cancer could provide huge insights for astrobiologists into the nature of life itself.

Cancer cells come pre-programmed to execute a well-defined cascade of changes, seemingly designed to facilitate both their enhanced survival and their dissemination through the…

It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.

“Until now, I've been writing about "now" as if it were literally an instant of time, but of course human faculties are not infinitely…

A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as some evidence…

Although the elusive 'cure' may be a distant dream, understanding the true nature of cancer will enable it to be better controlled and less…

Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly…

The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no…

“Can a truly absurd universe so convincingly mimic a meaningful one?”

Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the…

Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin…