We live at a moment when our relationships to each other, and to all other beings with whom we share this planet, are up for grabs.

Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?

When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.

Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds - promising untold opportunities - beckon. Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.

Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.

What an astonishing thing a book is.

The Big Bang is our modern scientific creation myth. It comes from the same human need to solve the cosmological riddle [Where did the universe come from?]