That all things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain. Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, Cogitationes de Natura Rerum Cogitatio
Matter, the wickedest offspring of thy race,
By form assisted, flew from thy embrace,
And rebel light obscured thy reverend dusky face.
With form and matter, time and place did join;
Body, thy foe, with these did leagues combine,
To spoil thy peaceful realm, and ruin all thy line. John Wilmot, Lord Rochester, 1647-80, Upon Nothing 1680
I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources. Peter Ackroyd
The pure energy of the cosmos began to cool and create matter in the form of countless trillions of sub-atomic particles. The first stuff there ever was. Half these particles were made of matter, the same kind of stuff which makes us. The rest were made of the opposite matter. Stuff called anti-matter. When the two meet they destroy each other in a flash of energy. It seems as if building the universe is a pretty wasteful process. Fortunately, there was just a bit more matter than anti-matter. Just one in a billion particles of stuff survived. Which was lucky for us. Stephen Hawking’s Universe: Into the Universe: The Story of Everything, BBC 1997
Everything in the universe is made from matter. From the smallest rock to the largest star. And all the matter that will ever be was created from the pure energy of the Big Bang. How the Universe Works s1e1: Big Bang, Discovery 2010
A strict materialist believes that everything depends on the motion of matter. He knows the form of the laws of motion though he does not know all their consequences when applied to systems of unknown complexity.
Now one thing in which the materialist (fortified with dynamical knowledge) believes is that if every motion great & small were accurately reversed, and the world left to itself again, everything would happen backwards the fresh water would collect out of the sea and run up the rivers and finally fly up to the clouds in drops which would extract heat from the air and evaporate and afterwards in condensing would shoot out rays of light to the sun and so on. Of course all living things would regrade from the grave to the cradle and we should have a memory of the future but not of the past.
The reason why we do not expect anything of this kind to take place at any time is our experience of irreversible processes, all of one kind, and this leads to the doctrine of a beginning and end instead of cyclical progression for ever. James Clerk Maxwell
All things that come into being and grow are earth and water. Xenophanes
99% of visible matter in the universe may be plasma. Including stars. And it comes in natural and man-made varieties. UFO Files 2/2: Alien Engineering, History 2006
This very well could be the force-field or the cloaking device of the future. Somehow similar to what people have dreamt about in Star Trek. Matter comes in four known states: the solid state, and then you heat it and you get the liquid state. And then you heat that and you get the gaseous state. And if you keep heating ... the molecules and atoms get stripped from the electrons and then become ionised. When it becomes like this we call it plasma. Mounir Laroussi, Old Dominion University
All the matter in the universe is made of atoms and sub-atomic particles that are ruled by probability, not certainty. Brian Greene, Beyond the Cosmos: Quantum Leap
There are living systems; there is no living matter. No substance, no single molecule, extracted and isolated from a living being possess, of its own, the aforementioned paradoxical properties. They are present in living systems only; that is to say, nowhere below the level of the cell. Jacques Monod
You do know what a bond is? A strong force of attraction … The coming together of atoms and molecules to form compounds, no? Chemical bonds are what make matter, matter. Bonds are what hold the physical world together. Breaking Bad s2e7: Negro y Azul, Walter to student, AMC 2009
We live in a world of matter. A realm of tiny particles far smaller than atoms that build the universe we know. But there is a mystery. Of all the particles scientists have discovered, the strangest and most elusive of all seem to defy our understanding of how the universe works. They are called neutrinos. Everywhere and nowhere, neutrinos are so ghostly, they can pass through solid matter as if it didn’t exist. And yet they hold the secrets to why the stars shine and what our universe is made of. Neutrino: Hunting the Ghost Particle, BBC 2021
Today, the quest to detect neutrinos has triggered multi-million-dollar experiments all over the globe. Now tantalising new evidence suggests neutrinos could be the link between our familiar world of matter and an unknown world of particles waiting to be discovered. ibid.
‘Neutrinos have got no electric charge, they’ve almost got no mass at all: they are so near to nothing as you can imagine.’ ibid. Frank Close
This mysterious fourth type of neutrino would lie outside the three already known to exist, and could be a link to an unknown realm of new particles. ibid.
Neutrinos change their identity; neutrinos have mass after all. ibid.
Most of what our universe is made of is missing. ibid.
What is there in places empty of matter? and Whence is it that the sun and planets gravitate toward one another without dense matter between them? Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain? and Whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world? To what end are comets? and Whence is it that planets move all one and the same way in orbs concentrick, while comets move all manner of ways in orbs very excentrick? and What hinders the fixed stars from falling upon one another? Isaac Newton, Opticks, Query XXVIII