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"My amateur interest in astronomy brought out the term 'magnitude,' which is used for the brightness of a star."
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"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."
"From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour."
"This sight... is by far the noblest astronomy affords."
"Anything that had happened once on Earth should be expected millions of times elsewhere in the Universe, that was almost an article of faith among scientists."
"Stars are fires that burn for thousands of years. Some of them burn slow and long, like red dwarfs. Others-blue giants-burn their fuel so fast they shine across great distances, and are easy to see. As they start to run out of fuel, they burn helium, grow even hotter, and explode in a supernova. Supernovas, they're brighter than the brightest galaxies. They die, but everyone watches them go."
"But when researchers at Bell Labs discovered that static tends to come from particular places in the sky, the whole field of radio astronomy opened up."
"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?""Yes.""All like ours?""I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted.""Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?""A blighted one."
"Until very recently, the heavenly bodies have been investigated only with reference to their position and their laws of motion, and a quarter of a century ago astronomy was little more than celestial topography."
Explore more quotes by Charles Francis Richter
"What emerged, of course, was that the magnitude scale presupposed that all earthquakes were alike except for a constant scaling factor. And this proved to be closer to the truth than we expected."
"I suggested that we might compare earthquakes in terms of the measured amplitudes recorded at these stations, with an appropriate correction for distance."
"For example, some stars put out large amounts of energy in the infrared part of the spectrum, so that this can produce a different relative magnitude rating than using light energy from the middle of the spectrum."
"If the assumptions used in calculating energy are changed, then this seriously affects the final result, even though the same body of data might be used."
"If one introduces the concept of energy of an earthquake then that is a theoretically derived quantity."
"I usually point out that most loss of life and property has been due to the collapse of antiquated and unsafe structures, mostly of brick and other masonry."
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