Birmingham, United Kingdom

Physics and Astronomy

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: physical science, environment
University website: www.birmingham.ac.uk
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Astronomy
Astronomy (from Greek: ἀστρονομία) is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets; the phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, all phenomena that originate outside Earth's atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole.
Physics
Physics (from Ancient Greek: φυσική (ἐπιστήμη), translit. physikḗ (epistḗmē), lit. 'knowledge of nature', from φύσις phýsis "nature") is the natural science that studies matter and its motion and behavior through space and time and that studies the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, and its main goal is to understand how the universe behaves.
Astronomy
And God made two great lights, great for their use
To man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night, altern.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VII, line 346.
Physics
The supreme task of the physicist is the discovery of the most general elementary laws from which the world-picture can be deduced logically. But there is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance, and this Einfühlung [literally, empathy or 'feeling one's way in'] is developed by experience.
Albert Einstein, Preface to Max Planck's Where is Science Going? (1933)
Physics
The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be."
Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964) Volume III, p. 18-9
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