Page 3 - Ned Wright News Today

"As a boy I believed I could make myself invisible. I'm not sure that I ever could, but I certainly had the ability to pass unnoticed." -Terence Stamp When we look up at the night sky from a dark location here on Earth, somewhere around 6,000 stars greet you on a clear night.

"Orbiting Earth in spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase beauty, not destroy it!" -Yuri Gagarin Fifty-two years ago today, the first human being left Earth, and we began our journey into outer space. But back in 1961, we didn't really know how far outer space stretched, or where all the matter and energy in the Universe came from.

"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe." -Frank Zappa Oh yeah, Zappa? Well, let me show you what hydrogen can do!

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” -Albert Einstein After a wide-ranging week here on Starts With A Bang, it's only fair to take a look at what conversations this has sparked among all of you, and to jump in where there's a good opportunity to add even more amazing stories about the Universe into the mix. In case you missed anything, this past week saw us cover the following topics:

"Every true, eternal problem is an equally true, eternal fault; every answer an atonement, every realisation an improvement." -Otto Weininger The best measurements of the distant Universe -- out beyond our galaxy -- have led us to the current picture of exactly what our Universe is doing: expanding and cooling, with its galaxies progressively getting farther and farther apart.

“We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson The story of the Universe is the story of us all; we all share the same cosmic history, coming from a hot, dense state some 13.8 billion years ago known as the Big Bang and emerging after billions of years of cosmic evolution to the Universe we know and love today.

"Nullius in Verba. (Take nobody's word for it.)" -Motto of the Royal Society You know the drill. New ideas come out all the time. Sometimes they're new theories, sometimes they're old theories with a new twist, but regardless, we need to ask the question: How good is your theory? For whatever it's worth, I came up with a scale for this.

"Think binary. When matter meets antimatter, both vanish, into pure energy. But both existed; I mean, there was a condition we'll call 'existence.' Think of one and minus one. Together they add up to zero, nothing, nada, niente, right? Picture them together, then picture them separating--peeling apart. ... Now you have something, you have two somethings, where once you had nothing." -John Updike Looking out at our Universe, at the myriad of stars, galaxies, and, well, &q...

“Do you know where to find marble conference tables? I'm looking to have a conference... not until I get the table though” -@kanyewest on Twitter

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -Winston Churchill It's often said that you can't get something from nothing. And while this may be true for most practical applications of your life, it isn't true for our physical Universe.