Saturday, July 27, 2013

The most astounding fact


Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom we've met many times in these pages before, was asked during an interview for Time magazine what he though was the most astounding fact he could share about the universe.  Here's his response.





It's part of a longer interview, in which he answered ten questions from Time readers.  You can see those responses here.  Recommended viewing.

Peter

3 comments:

Old NFO said...

That is one I've never thought of, but is response does make sense!

Differ said...

Wow.That actually brought tears to my eyes. The man has a rare gift for inspiriational words.

SiGraybeard said...

I think I side with Einstein on this one. "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible to us". Just substitute the word "astounding" for the word incomprehensible.

Mathematics is a field that is almost completely divorced from reality, developed only as a set of consistent rules for manipulating the concepts of numbers; why is math such potent, nearly perfect way of modeling the universe?

Compared with that big picture, the role of supernovas in producing heavy elements that become us is random fact.