The revelation we've come to is that we can trust our memories of a past with lower, not higher, entropy only if the big bang - the process, event, or happening that brought the universe into existence - started off the universe in an extraordinarily special, highly ordered state of low entropy.

I think it's too fast to say that all sci-fi ultimately winds up having some place in science. On the other hand, imaginative minds working outside of science as storytellers certainly have come upon ideas that, with the passing decades, have either materialized of come close to materializing.

Science is very good at answering the 'how' questions. 'How did the universe evolve to the form that we see?' But it is woefully inadequate in addressing the 'why' questions. 'Why is there a universe at all?' These are the meaning questions, which many people think religion is particularly good at dealing with.

To tell you the truth, I've never met anybody who can envision more than three dimensions. There are some who claim they can, and maybe they can; it's hard to say.

Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.

The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.