You could think of the galaxy as a sort of stove with lots of pots on it, and the pots are the interstellar medium, like a chicken broth getting stronger with every reduction. Every time a supernova goes off and sends its heavy elements out into the interstellar medium, we cook up a stew that's better and better for solar systems and life.
We've been given the gift of a billion years of cosmic time, and we should not screw it up. But at the rate we're using up our planet's natural resources and fouling our own nest means we're not going to last a billion years.
My favorite galaxy of all is called the Sombrero, NGC 4594. It's an amazing galaxy that is really two galaxies in one.
Hubble is unique. Nothing else can do what it can do. Once it's gone, we're going to be paralyzed.
I was the kind of kid who liked omnivorously almost all kinds of science - rock collections, fossils - and I like leaves, I like plants, and I like biology.
The realization that baryonic matter is only a trace component of the universe revealed our understanding of the cosmos as shockingly incomplete and was one of the milestones that ushered in the era of modern cosmology.
The origin of galaxies is one of the fundamental questions of astronomy, and that's what I've been studying.
It's a blessing in a scientific career - the almost daily thrill of scientific discovery.
Far from feeling dwarfed by the vast reaches and energy of the cosmos, what we really learn is that we are the most remarkable and complicated product of cosmic evolution, and our potential is unlimited.
Antarctica is a paradise compared to Mars.
One lesson astronomy tells us is that we're a tiny mote in a hostile void, and help is too far away.
Very few astronomers will be mourned with the same degree of love and admiration as Vera Rubin.
Hubble has established for the first time that the distant universe looks different from the nearby universe.
We're on our own on spaceship Earth. So we have to solve our own problems.
Receiving the National Medal of Science is the thrill of a lifetime, but good science does not happen in isolation.
I take comfort in the fact that it is a beautiful universe, and we belong here and that we fit. This is our home.
It's quite likely that planets and solar systems like ours could be forming in other galaxies in great numbers.
I graduated from high school in 1962.
I was born in Boston, but I moved to Cleveland when I was three.
I remember spending evenings looking at the sky with my dad, who was interested. He was a civil engineer and was interested in science as a kid. And he always encouraged me.
