At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs-as long as no one is watching, anything goes.

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.

Celebrate our brief moment in the sun

Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas.

The real thing that physics tell us about the universe is that it's big, rare event happens all the time — including life — and that doesn't mean it's special.

Empirical explorations ultimately change our understanding of which questions are important and fruitful and which are not.

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.