Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Series)

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

The ordinary photon is a member of the boson family.

The leptons most familiar to the non-physicist are the electron and perhaps the neutrino;

the force that keeps two (or more) of them together actually grows stronger the more you separate them—as if they were attached by some sort of subnuclear rubber band. Separate the quarks enough, the rubber band snaps and the stored energy summons E = mc2 to create a new quark at each end,

We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.

Nebulium was simply the signature of ordinary oxygen doing extraordinary things.

universality of physical laws tells us that if we land on another planet with a thriving alien civilization, they will be running on the same laws that we have discovered and tested here on Earth—even if the aliens harbor different social and political beliefs.

after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.