My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together.

Knowing a deep thing well, which is what science asks of its practitioners, is an empowerment that is very profound. It's a liberation.

We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go.

If you have a beating heart, that's good enough.

For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature.

We may be living at that moment, on the cusp, when we go from being a species that feels a kind of loneliness in the cosmos to actually one sometime in the not too distant future being able to confirm the existence of other intelligent life.

Science is nothing more than a neverending search for the truth.