Martin J. Rees · 208 pages
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“The sun has adjusted its structure so that nuclear power is generated in the core, and diffuses outward, at just the rate needed to balance the heat lost from the surface-heat that is the basis for life on Earth.”
― Martin J. Rees, quote from Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
“Our universe, extending immensely far beyond our present horizon, may itself be just one member of a possibly infinite ensemble. This ‘multiverse’ concept, though speculative, is a natural extension of current cosmological theories, which gain credence because they account for things that we do observe. The physical laws and geometry could be different in other universes, and this offers a new perspective on the seemingly special values that the six numbers take in ours.”
― Martin J. Rees, quote from Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
“[The fine structure constant] ... defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. Its value controls the power from the Sun and, more sensitively, how stars transmute hydrogen into all the atoms of the periodic table.”
― Martin J. Rees, quote from Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
“A measure of the strength of a body's gravity is the speed with which a projectile must be fired to escape its grasp. It takes 11.2 kilometers per second to escape from the Earth. This speed is tiny compared with that of light, 300,000 kilometers per second, but it challenges rocket engineers constrained to use chemical fuel, which converts only a billionth of its so-called mass 'rest-mass energy' (Einstein's mc^2) into effective power. The escape velocity from the sun's surface is 600 kilometers per second-still only one fifth of one percent of the speed of light.”
― Martin J. Rees, quote from Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
“More energy is needed to rise a millimetre above a neutron star's surface than to break completely free of Earth's gravity. A pen dropped from a height of one metre would impact with the energy of a ton of TNT (although the intense gravity on a neutron star's surface would actually, of course, squash any such objects instantly). A projectile would need to attain half the speed of light to escape its gravity; conversely, anything that fell freely onto a neutron star from a great height would impact at more than half the speed of light.”
― Martin J. Rees, quote from Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
“The Sun contains about a thousand times more mass than Jupiter. If it were cold, gravity would squeeze it a million times denser than an ordinary solid: it would be a 'white dwarf' about the size of the Earth but 330,000 times more massive. But the Sun's core actually has a temperature of fifteen million degrees-thousands of time hotter than its glowing surface, and the pressure of this immensely hot gas 'puffs up' the Sun and holds it in equilibrium.”
― Martin J. Rees, quote from Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
Martin J. Rees
Born place: in York, The United Kingdom
Born date June 23, 1942
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“He granted its due share to everything equally, drawing from everything only what was beautiful in it, and in the end left himself only the divine Raphael as a teacher. So a great poetic artist, having read many different writings filled with much delight and majestic beauty, in the end might leave himself, as his daily reading, only Homer's Iliad, having discovered that there is nothing that has not already been reflected in its profound and great perfection.”
― Nikolai Gogol, quote from The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
“The job of every generation is to discover the flaws of the one that came before it. That's part of growing up, figuring out all the ways your parents and their friends are broken. So pity the first people to reach puberty after a zombie apocalypse, who would have some truly heavy lifting in this department...You become whatever they fear the most. Now THAT'S evolution”
― Holly Black, quote from Zombies Vs. Unicorns
“It struck me that such analyses had it backward. It’s the American public for whom the Iraq War is often no more real than a video game. Five years into this war, I am not always confident most Americans fully appreciate the caliber of the people fighting for them, the sacrifices they have made, and the sacrifices they continue to make. After the Vietnam War ended, the onus of shame largely fell on the veterans. This time around, if shame is to be had when the Iraq conflict ends - and all indications are there will be plenty of it - the veterans are the last people in America to deserve it. When it comes to apportioning shame my vote goes to the American people who sent them to war in a surge of emotion but quickly lost the will to either win it or end it. The young troops I profiled in Generation Kill, as well as the other men and women in uniform I’ve encountered in combat zones throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, are among the finest people of their generation. We misuse them at our own peril.”
― Evan Wright, quote from Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War
“The heroic efforts of the Americans and Europeans during this period are so numerous (their diaries run for thousands of pages) that it is impossible to narrate all of their deeds here.”
― Iris Chang, quote from The Rape of Nanking
“Aren’t universal transmissions supposed to be pure and uncorrupted?”
― Jessica Brody, quote from 52 Reasons to Hate My Father
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