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In the frantic search for an elusive 'cure,' few researchers stand back and ask a very basic question: why does cancer exist? What is its place in the grand story of life?

Paul Davies

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Paul Davies
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: April 22
Cosmologist
Physicist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Paul Charles William Davies
Asks
Grand
Story
Cures
Place
Search
Stories
Basic
Doe
Cancer
Frantic
Back
Exist
Researchers
Life
Question
Elusive
Stand
Cure

More quotes by Paul Davies

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The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is something behind it all is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.
Paul Davies
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The secret of our success on planet Earth is space. Lots of it. Our solar system is a tiny island of activity in an ocean of emptiness.
Paul Davies
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For millennia mankind has believed that nothing can come out of nothing. Today we can argue that everything has come out of nothing. Nobody has to pay for the universe. It is the ultimate free lunch.
Paul Davies
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The laws of physics ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose.
Paul Davies
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Things changed with the discovery of neutron stars and black holes - objects with gravitational fields so intense that dramatic space and time-warping effects occur.
Paul Davies
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I think if we're going to send messages to the stars then it needs a great deal of thought that it's something that should involve the entire not only scientific community, but the entire world community. We need to think very carefully indeed.
Paul Davies
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Cancer is such a ruthless adversary because it behaves as if it has its own fiendishly cunning agenda.
Paul Davies
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If we knew we were not alone in the universe it would have a very, very deep impact on our worldview, on our understanding of our place in the universe.
Paul Davies
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Scientists have no agreed theory of the origin of life - plenty of scenarios, conjectures and just-so stories, but nothing with solid experimental support.
Paul Davies
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It's always good in science to say Well how do you know that? and Are you really sure? and Could there be an exceptional case?
Paul Davies
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Astonishingly, in spite of decades of research, there is no agreed theory of cancer, no explanation for why, inside almost all healthy cells, there lurks a highly efficient cancer subroutine that can be activated by a variety of agents - radiation, chemicals, inflammation and infection.
Paul Davies
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If we're thinking about old civilizations, those that formed a long time ago and there were stars and planets around long before Earth even existed, then these are going to be towards the center of the galaxy. That is the place to look if you think there are ancient civilizations that have made beacons or some other way of attracting our attention.
Paul Davies
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The thing about lucid dreams is that it's not like the real world where you are constrained by all sorts of things, including the laws of physics - you can do magic.
Paul Davies
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We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws.
Paul Davies
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An argument often given for why Earth couldn't host another form of life is that once the life we know became established, it would have eliminated any competition through natural selection. But if another form of life were confined to its own niche, there would be little direct competition with regular life.
Paul Davies
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Are we alone in the universe? This is a question which goes back to the dawn of history, but for most of human history it has been in the province of religion and philosophy. Fifty or something years ago, however, it became part of science.
Paul Davies
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Mathematics is not something that you find lying around in your back yard. It's produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs.
Paul Davies
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Searching for alternative life on Earth might seem misconceived, because there is excellent evidence that every kind of life so far studied evolved from a common ancestor that lived billions of years ago. Yet most of the life that exists on Earth has never been properly classified.
Paul Davies
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The Goldilocks Enigma is the idea that everything in the universe is just right for life, like the porridge in the fairy tale.
Paul Davies
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Should we find a second form of life right here on our doorstep, we could be confident that life is a truly cosmic phenomenon. If so, there may well be sentient beings somewhere in the galaxy wondering, as do we, if they are not alone in the universe.
Paul Davies