According to inflation, the more than 100 billion galaxies, sparkling throughout space like heavenly diamonds, are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky. To me, this realization is one of the greatest wonders of the modern scientific age.

Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.

I wouldn't say that The Fabric of the Cosmos is a book on cosmology. Cosmology certainly plays a big part, but the major theme is our ever-evolving understanding of space and time, and what it all means for our sense of reality.

How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

The pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand.

Nature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture.