TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place along the straight line in which that force is impressed.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index R > Category: Radio Telescope

Radio Telescope Quotes (5 quotes)

At times the [radio telescope] records exhibited a feature characteristic of interference, occurring some time later than the passage of the two known sources. This intermittent feature was curious, and I recall saying once that we would have to investigate the origin of that interference some day. We joked that it was probably due to the faulty ignition of some farm hand returning from a date.
From address to the 101st Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Gainesville, Florida (27 Dec 1958). Printed in 'An Account of the Discovery of Jupiter as a Radio Source', The Astronomical Journal (Mar 1959), 64, No. 2, 37.
Science quotes on:  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Curious (95)  |  Date (14)  |  Due (143)  |  Farm (28)  |  Faulty (3)  |  Hand (149)  |  Ignition (3)  |  Interference (22)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Known (453)  |  Origin (250)  |  Passage (52)  |  Radio (60)  |  Record (161)  |  Returning (2)  |  Source (101)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)

I think that the event which, more than anything else, led me to the search for ways of making more powerful radio telescopes, was the recognition, in 1952, that the intense source in the constellation of Cygnus was a distant galaxy—1000 million light years away. This discovery showed that some galaxies were capable of producing radio emission about a million times more intense than that from our own Galaxy or the Andromeda nebula, and the mechanisms responsible were quite unknown. ... [T]he possibilities were so exciting even in 1952 that my colleagues and I set about the task of designing instruments capable of extending the observations to weaker and weaker sources, and of exploring their internal structure.
From Nobel Lecture (12 Dec 1974). In Stig Lundqvist (ed.), Nobel Lectures, Physics 1971-1980 (1992), 187.
Science quotes on:  |  Andromeda (2)  |  Capability (44)  |  Capable (174)  |  Colleague (51)  |  Constellation (18)  |  Design (203)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Distance (171)  |  Emission (20)  |  Event (222)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Exciting (50)  |  Exploration (161)  |  Extending (3)  |  Galaxies (29)  |  Galaxy (53)  |  Instrument (158)  |  Intensity (34)  |  Internal (69)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Light (635)  |  Making (300)  |  Mechanism (102)  |  More (2558)  |  Motivation (28)  |  Nebula (16)  |  Observation (593)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Radio (60)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Search (175)  |  Set (400)  |  Show (353)  |  Source (101)  |  Structure (365)  |  Task (152)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unknown (195)  |  Way (1214)  |  Weakness (50)  |  Year (963)

In 1945 J.A. Ratcliffe … suggested that I [join his group at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge] to start an investigation of the radio emission from the Sun, which had recently been discovered accidentally with radar equipment. … [B]oth Ratcliffe and Sir Lawrence Bragg, then Cavendish Professor, gave enormous support and encouragement to me. Bragg’s own work on X-ray crystallography involved techniques very similar to those we were developing for “aperture synthesis,” and he always showed a delighted interest in the way our work progressed.
From Autobiography in Wilhelm Odelberg (ed.), Les Prix Nobel en 1974/Nobel Lectures (1975)
Science quotes on:  |  Accident (92)  |  Aperture (5)  |  Sir Lawrence Bragg (16)  |  Cambridge (17)  |  Crystallography (9)  |  Delight (111)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Emission (20)  |  Encouragement (27)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Interest (416)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Involved (90)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Professor (133)  |  Progress (492)  |  Radar (9)  |  Radio (60)  |  Ratcliffe_Jack (2)  |  Ray (115)  |  Show (353)  |  Start (237)  |  Sun (407)  |  Support (151)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Technique (84)  |  Way (1214)  |  Work (1402)  |  X-ray (43)  |  X-ray Crystallography (12)

In my estimation it was obvious that Jansky had made a fundamental and very important discovery. Furthermore, he had exploited it to the limit of his equipment facilities. If greater progress were to be made it would be necessary to construct new and different equipment especially designed to measure the cosmic static.
Reber explaining his own motivation to build the first radio telescope.
Science quotes on:  |  Astronomy (251)  |  Construct (129)  |  Cosmic (74)  |  Design (203)  |  Different (595)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Exploit (19)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Greater (288)  |  Limit (294)  |  Measure (241)  |  Necessary (370)  |  New (1273)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Progress (492)

What does it mean for a civilisation to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilisation is a few hundred years old … an advanced civilisation millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bushbaby or a macaque
'Star Makers', Cosmos (Feb 2006).
Science quotes on:  |  Beyond (316)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Decade (66)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Mean (810)  |  Million (124)  |  Old (499)  |  Radio (60)  |  Spaceship (5)  |  Technology (281)  |  Telescope (106)  |  Year (963)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.