An almost indispensable skill for any creative person is the ability to pose the right questions. Creative people identify promising, exciting, and, most important, accessible routes to progress - and eventually formulate the questions correctly.

Although I was first drawn to math and science by the certainty they promised, today I find the unanswered questions and the unexpected connections at least as attractive.

All the normal matter in the Milky Way disc is denser than the dark matter that surrounds it.

I considered going into business or becoming a lawyer - not for the money, but for the thrill of problem-solving.

If such external influences are intrinsic to religion, then logic and scientific thought dictate that there must be a mechanism by which this influence is transmitted. A religious or spiritual belief that involves an invisible undetectable force that nonetheless influences human actions and behavior or that of the world itself produces a situation in which a believer has no choice but to have faith and abandon logic--or simply not care.

Basically, I wasn't properly socialized, so it made sense to do physics.

We certainly don't yet know all the answers. But the universe is about to be pried open.