If and when all the laws governing physical phenomena are finally discovered, and all the empirical constants occurring in these laws are finally expressed through the four independent basic constants, we will be able to say that physical science has reached its end, that no excitement is left in further explorations, and that all that remains to a physicist is either tedious work on minor details or the self-educational study and adoration of the magnificence of the completed system. At that stage physical science will enter from the epoch of Columbus and Magellan into the epoch of the National Geographic Magazine!

We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.

Columbus gave Europe a New World; [Alexander von] Humboldt made it known in its physical, material, intellectual, and moral aspects.

Long before Christopher Columbus, the celebrated Chinese navigator Zheng He travelled through the south and westward maritime routes in the Indian Ocean and established relations with more than thirty countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.