What is the universe? Is it a great 3D movie in which we are the unwilling actors? Is it a cosmic joke, a giant computer, a work of art by a Supreme Being or simply an experiment? The problem in trying to understand the universe is that we have nothing to compare it to.

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.

As I continued to fall into the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.

There was emptiness more profound than the void between the stars, for which there was no here and there and before and after, and yet out of that void the entire plenum of existence sprang forth.

While we can prove that almost all numbers in the continuum are random, we cannot prove that any specific number is indeed random.

Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the very young but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event.

Possession of a program with unique analytic capabilities puts a scientist in as much of a priveleged position to make new discoveries as the possession of a powerful telescope.

Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts.

Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity.

Science shows us what exists but not what to do about it.

It is unlikely that we will ever see a star being born. Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the very young, but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event. Stars are born inside thick clouds of dust and gas in the spiral arms of the galaxy, so thick that visible light cannot penetrate them.