A Quote by Debra Fischer

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

Debra Fischer

Quote Topics

About Before Knew Only Our Planets Solar Solar System System Were

Quote Author

Debra Fischer
American - Scientist

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

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

The planets and moons of our solar system are blatantly visible because they reflect sunlight. Without the nearby Sun, these planets would be cryptic and dark on the sky.

Seth Shostak

Venus and Mars are our next of kin: they are the two most Earth-like planets that we know about. They're the only two other very Earth-like planets in our solar system, meaning they orbit close to the sun; they have rocky surfaces and thin atmospheres.

David Grinspoon

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

Estimates are that at least 70 per cent of all stars are accompanied by planets, and since the latter can occur in systems rather than as individuals (think of our own solar system), the number of planets in the Milky Way galaxy is of order one trillion.

Seth Shostak

When Hubble was launched, it became clear very shortly thereafter that there was a problem with the optics.The mirror was not quite the right shape. And the one program that I had really been looking forward to doing with Hubble was studying outer planets in our solar system, the planets Uranus and Neptune.

Heidi Hammel

We know there are billions of stars and planets literally out there, and the universe is getting bigger. We know from our fancy telescopes that just in the last two years more than 20 planets have been identified outside our solar system that seem to be far enough away from their suns - - and dense enough - - that they might be able to support some form of life. So it makes it increasing less likely that we're alone. But if we were visited someday, I wouldn't be surprised.

William J. Clinton

When I was a little kid, we only knew about our nine planets. Since then, we've downgraded Pluto but have discovered that other solar systems and stars are common. So life is probably quite prevalent.

Buzz Aldrin

But one of the coolest things about meteorites is that most were formed four-and-a-half-billion years ago, during the birth of our solar system, when, for reasons not yet known, a cloud of gas and dust was transformed into a sun with circling planets.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

No matter how you measure it, whether you measure the amount of mass or you measure the number of bodies, most of our solar system exists out beyond the orbits of the asteroids. So we could not have claimed to know our own solar system until Voyager had toured the giant planets.

Carolyn Porco

The gas-giant planets in our solar system all have large moons.

Debra Fischer

Pluto and its brethren are the most populous class of planets in our solar system.

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.