#atoms

In Italy, on the breaking up of the Roman Empire, society might be said to be resolved into its original elements, - into hostile atoms, whose only movement was that of mutual repulsion. ↗

— Edward Everett

#breaking #breaking up #elements #empire #hostile

We thought it would be nice to have atoms interact in such a gentle way with the photons that they would just take an imprint of the photons, so that many atoms could 'see' the same photon and it would give rise to a lot of interesting effects. Myself and my colleagues had this project for a very long time and we were finally able to observe it. ↗

— Serge Haroche

#atoms #be nice #colleagues #could #effects

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language. ↗

— Werner Heisenberg

#atoms #cannot #here #language #ordinary

The knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth - the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars- the high mass ones among them- went unstable in their later years- they collapsed and then exploded- scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy- guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems- stars with orbiting planets. And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up- many people feel small, cause their small and the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from those stars. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#atoms #life #science #life

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#quantum-physics #identity

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. ↗

— Muriel Rukeyser

#made #stories #universe

Moreover, the abundance of chemical compounds and their importance in daily life hindered the chemist from investigating the question, in what does the individuality of the atoms of different elements consist. ↗

— Johannes Stark

#atoms #chemical #chemist #compounds #consist

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#beauty #cosmos #philosophy #science #universe

I have reveled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It’s a great load off my life, for I don’t mind being such a micro-organism—to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe—such a great universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my “Soul,” my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part—I shall still have some sort of a finger in the Pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me—but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you. ↗

— W.N.P. Barbellion

#death #life #death

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#cosmos #dna #sense-of-wonder #stars #wonder