Neutrinos alone, among all the known particles, have ethereal properties that are striking and romantic enough both to have inspired a poem by John Updike and to have sent teams of scientists deep underground for 50 years to build huge science-fiction-like contraptions to unravel their mysteries.

The ultimate goal of physicists is to arrive at an equation that explains everything and could fit on a t-shirt. That may happen but the t-shirt would have to be 10-dimensional.

We all trust each other to some extent. We have to rely on experts to some extent, but we should learn to be sceptical.

For many, to live in a universe that may have no purpose, and no creator, is unthinkable.

We now know that we are more insignificant than we ever imagined. If you get rid of everything we see, the universe is essentially the same. We constitute a 1 percent bit of pollution in a universe . . . we are completely irrelevant.

People are interested in science, but they don't always know they're interested in science, and so I try to find a way to get them interested.

The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it.