[PPARC '99 Home Page]

PPARC '99 - More Quotes

A collection of moderately funny (well, for astrophysicists at least...) quotes heard during the course of our PhDs:

• [On the nature of extra-galactic astronomy at Durham] "Making predictions and testing models is not the only thing going on here." (Shaun Cole).
• "Not so much a bang as a pffft!" (Richard Savage)
• "I'm not going to dispute their standard candleness." (Somak Raychaudhury)
• [Giving a seminar] "I don't have anything intelligent to say." (Keith Taylor)
• "My explanation's a load of rubbish, but it's a good explanation so I'll explain it anyway." (Dave Green)
• "I've used these universes before, they're silly." (Stephen Quinney)
• "Describe the Universe, give three examples." (Roger Davies)
• "There are four possible universes and the observations discount four of them." (Roger Davies)
• "For the other 7 galaxies, 6 of them would have been detected at 25 micrometers if they emitted at that wavelength at the same level as the detected objects." (Moles et al, A&A, 285, 404-414)
• "Investigating the Big Bang has already delivered remarkable benefits for healthcare." (PPARC)
• "This has an important connection with trying to work everything out." (Andy Fabian)
• "I think there's probably more dusty people here." (John Magorrian)
• "Hereafter, dust mass refers to M_gas + M_dust" (van Dokkum and Franx, AJ, 110, 2027-2036)
• "It's worse than that - you'll get a singular matrix!" (George Efstathiou)
  "That's worse than rubbish in the Milky Way?" (Will Saunders)
• [Flashed on screen whilst presenting conclusions] "Not applicable!" (Joe Silk)
• "Dark matter has a significant dark matter content" (Carolyn Crawford)
• "You're not going to learn anything about the title of this talk" (Donald Lynden-Bell)
• "Max [Pettini] has a lot of this degeneracy" (Donald Lynden-Bell)
• [Speaking of the 2dF] "We now have spectra of over 140 galaxies" (Darren Madgwick)

This page needs some more quotes... so mail me with them!