29 OCT 2014 by ideonexus

 So Many Objects in Space, Why isn't it Filled with Light?

So numerous are the objects which meet our view in the heavens, that we cannot imagine a point of space where some light would not strike the eye;—innumerable stars, thousands of double and multiple systems, clusters in one blaze with their tens of thousands of stars, and the nebulae amazing us by the strangeness of their forms and the incomprehensibility of their nature, till at last, from the limit of our senses, even these thin and airy phantoms vanish in the distance.
Folksonomies: astronomy
Folksonomies: astronomy
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12 SEP 2011 by ideonexus

 The Foundation of Science, Not the Periphery, Is Where th...

A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension. I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up a...
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Isaac Asimov describing his young experience with a professor as he worked on new research.