A Quote by Alan Stern

We really just didn't realize the diversity of planetary types in our solar system. Pluto looked like a misfit because it was the only one we saw. And just as a Chihuahua is still a dog, these ice dwarfs are still planetary bodies. They're large enough to make themselves round by self gravity, and they surely pass the test of planethood.

Alan Stern

Quote Topics

Because Bodies Chihuahua Diversity Dog Dwarfs Enough Gravity Ice Just Large Like Looked Make Only Our Pass Planetary Pluto Realize Really Round Saw Self Solar Solar System Still Surely System Test Themselves Types

Quote Author

Alan Stern
American - Scientist
Born: November 22, 1957

New Horizons isn't just visiting Pluto; it's visiting this entire region. Whatever it finds, this will be a signal moment for planetary exploration - the capstone to our first reconnaissance of the planets of our solar system.

Alan Stern

For planetary explorers like us, there is little that can compare to the sighting of activity on another solar system body. This has been a heart-stopper, and surely one of our most thrilling results.

Carolyn Porco

It used to be said that Pluto is a misfit. But now we know Earth is the misfit. This is the most populous class of planet in our solar system and we have never sent a mission to this class.

Alan Stern

We were very surprised to find out that Pluto is still geologically alive. It has upended our ideas of how planetary geophysics works.

Alan Stern

As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide.

Alan Stern

As our sensitivity improves, we are finally seeing planets with longer orbital periods, planetary systems that look more like our solar system.

Debra Fischer

The position of the planetary bodies at the moment of birth is a musical score done in planetary symbols of the heavenly harmonics and dissonances as these are played into the life of the incarnating ego.

Corinne Heline

Of course Pluto is a planet: It's massive enough to have its shape controlled by gravity rather than material strength, which is the hallmark of planethood.

Alan Stern

All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster.

Olaf Stapledon

The planetary phase of history has begun, but the future shape of global society remains profoundly uncertain. Though perhaps improbable, a shift toward a planetary civilization of enriched lives, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability is still possible.

Paul Raskin

Men are weak now, and yet they transform the Earth's surface. In millions of years their might will increase to the extent that they will change the surface of the Earth, its oceans, the atmosphere, and themselves. They will control the climate and the Solar System just as they control the Earth. They will travel beyond the limits of our planetary system; they will reach other Suns, and use their fresh energy instead of the energy of their dying luminary.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Why would you need to expand beyond the solar system if you already have access to all the information you need, and you've essentially insulated yourself against a planetary apocalypse? Maybe that's enough.

Alastair Reynolds

I'd love to go into space again if there were a mission to Mars. I'd also love to go to a completely different planetary system, out of our solar system.

Mae Jemison

Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development of our planetary system were not exceptions.

Eric Chaisson

Discovering that our solar system has many more planets than we ever expected, and that most of them are ice dwarfs rather than like Earth and the other rocky terrestrials, is just another step in the revolution in viewpoint that removed the Earth from the center of the physical universe and makes Earth all the more special.

Alan Stern

Most of the solar system resides beyond the orbits of the asteroids. There is more to learn there about general planetary processes than on Mars.

Carolyn Porco