If you have somebody who's brilliant and highly creative with a different point of view than you have, and a very different intellectual background, great things can happen.
Kip ThorneRead
A big misconception is that a black hole is made of matter that has just been compacted to a very small size. That's not true. A black hole is made from warped space and time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A black hole is not merely a dense object but a region where space and time are significantly altered.
Kip Thorne emphasizes that black holes are not just compacted matter but rather areas in the universe where the very fabric of space and time is distorted due to extreme gravitational forces. This challenges common misconceptions and highlights the complex nature of black holes in astrophysics.
Themes
Black HoleSpaceTimeGravityAstrophysics
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about black holes, this quote could illustrate the difference between common perceptions and scientific understanding.
More from Kip Thorne
All quotes βI think that the future of the human race is to spread through the universe, and now is the time that we should be laying the foundations for that.
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Whether you can go back in time is held in the grip of the law of quantum gravity.
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'Closed timelike curve' is the jargon for time travel. It means you go out, come back and meet yourself in the past.
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If you think that the distance from the Earth to the nearest planet where we could live comfortably... is being, like, from New York to Australia... what we've achieved so far, in going to the moon, that's about two-and-a-half inches. So that's the challenge.
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If you go down through the horizon of a black hole, at the center you don't find a tunnel that leads you to some other place in the universe.
Kip ThorneRead
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People who look for the first time through a microscope say, 'Now I see this, and then I see that,' and even a skilled observer can be fooled. On these observations I have spent more time than many will believe, but I have done them with joy, and I have taken no notice of those who have said, 'Why take so much trouble,' and, 'What good is it?'
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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 obvious and straightforward way is to search for a second form of life on Earth. No planet is more Earth-like than Earth itself, so if the path to life is easy, then life should have started up many times over right here.
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We will first understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.
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Because a fact seems strange to you, you conclude that it is not one. ... All science, however, commences by being strange. Science is successive. It goes from one wonder to another. It mounts by a ladder. The science of to-day would seem extravagant to the science of a former time. Ptolemy would believe Newton mad.
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