The root cause of the looming energy problem - and the key to easing environmental, economic and religious tensions while improving public health - is to address the unending, and unequal, growth of the human population. And the one proven way to reduce fertility rates is to empower young women by educating them.

I can't prove that God doesn't exist, but I'd much rather live in a universe without one.

In this sense, science, as physicist Steven Weinberg has emphasized, does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God.

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.

You shouldn't be afraid of science. Accepting the reality of nature makes life more exciting and even more precious.

The really important thing is learning how to sceptically question and rely on empirical evidence.

The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not.