It feels great to discover a planet, just like any discovery in science, except that it has more of the feel of exploration - you can go back and look at it. However, I can never visit.

Deep and elegant explanations relate to natural or social phenomena and the observer often has no place in them.

In science, it is rare that a transformational change occurs during our lifetimes.

Life and the universe compare to each other like a child and a parent, parent and offspring.

It feels great to discover a planet, just like any discovery in science, except that it has more of the feel of exploration - you can go back and look at it. However, I can never visit.

My parents gave me a small telescope, then I built my own, and one thing led to another. So thats how I ended up going from being a hobby astronomer to a professional astronomer.

We do care about planets like the Earth because by now we understood that life as a chemical system really needs a smaller planet with water and with rocks and with a lot of complex chemistry to originate, to emerge, to survive.