Detritus Quotes (2 quotes)
Humans ... would not exist but for the wreckage of spent stars. So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?
In Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007), 222.
The mere consideration of the number of cubic feet of detritus annually removed from any tract of land by its rivers, does not produce so striking an impression upon the mind as the statement of how much the mean surface level of the district in question, would be reduced by such a removal.
In 'Changes of the Sea-Level Effected by Existing Physical Causes During Stated Periods of Time', The London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science (Apr 1853), 4th series, 5, 260-261. In this paper, Alfred Tylor was perhaps the first geologist to estimate the probable amount of solid matter annually brought to the ocean by rivers and other agents. He inferred that the quantity of detritus now distributed over the sea bottom every year would, at the end of 10,000 years, cause an elevation of the sea-level to the extent of at least three inches. In turn, the surface of a drainage basin would be lowered year upon year.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
