A Quote by Alan Stern

We're just learning that a lot of planets are small planets, and we didn't know that before, fact is, in planetary science, objects such as Pluto and the other dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt are considered planets and called planets in everyday discourse in scientific meetings.

Alan Stern

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Before Belt Considered Discourse Dwarf Everyday Fact Just Know Learning Lot Meetings Objects Other Planetary Planets Pluto Science Scientific Small

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Alan Stern
American - Scientist
Born: November 22, 1957

The Kuiper belt region, which I call the third zone because it lies beyond the rocky terrestrial planets and beyond the giant planets, is a bizarre frontier.

Alan Stern

Planets are the big bullies of the planetary system that are, that basically ignore everybody else around them. And everybody else has to deal with the planets. Those are what the planets are.

Mike Brown

When I grew up as a kid, we didn't know there were any other planets outside of our own solar system. It was widely speculated that planet formation was an incredibly rare event and that it's possible that other planets just don't exist in our galaxy, and it's just this special situation where we happen to have planets around our sun.

John M. Grunsfeld

The planets. Now footnote, I'm including Pluto in the planets, because I think it's terrible what they did to Pluto. And it's still a planet to me. I grew up with Pluto as a planet, it will always be a planet.

Demetri Martin

Back before the Kuiper Belt was discovered, Pluto did look like a misfit that didn't belong with either the terrestrials or the giant planets.

Alan Stern

A major puzzle for which nobody has an answer is this: is there some size at which the planets change their nature from water-rich planets like Neptune, to rocky planets like the Earth? We have found two planets that are the size of the Earth in radius, but they are very close to their host star, so water on the surface would evaporate away.

Geoffrey Marcy

A 'serious' scientist in 1992 or 1993 had to admit the possibility that planets were really rare, that most stars might not have planets. We've gone from there to here - where most stars have planets.

Debra Fischer

There's no doubt that the search for planets is motivated by the search for life. Humans are interested in whether or not life evolves on other planets. We'd especially like to find communicating, technological life, and we look around our own solar system, and we see that of all the planets, there's only one that's inhabited.

Debra Fischer

Theoretically, there are planets with an environment that can support life. As yet there is no evidence that there indeed is life on other planets. It's only a matter of time before we get to know.

Rakesh Sharma

There are lots of really interesting little planets out there in the Kuiper Belt, but Pluto's the only one that's got all the cool attributes.

Alan Stern

Before 1995, the only planets we knew about were the planets in our solar system.

Debra Fischer

Earlier generations of stars in the galaxy could well have had planets. But really, there was only hydrogen and helium to work with, so they'd all be gas giants and not small, rocky planets.

Jill Tarter

Personally, I don't think there's intelligent life on other planets. Why should other planets be any different from this one?

Bob Monkhouse

Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.

Isaac Newton

The universe has told us the most common types of planets are small planets, and our study shows these are exactly the ones that are most likely to be orbiting Alpha Centauri A and B.

Debra Fischer

Maybe the search for life shouldn't restrict attention to planets like Earth. Science fiction writers have other ideas: balloon-like creatures floating in the dense atmospheres of planets such as Jupiter, swarms of intelligent insects, nano-scale robots and more.

Martin Rees

A Quote by Alan Stern

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