I did not set out to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs. I'm a particle physicist, and I was actually thinking about dark matter along with some collaborators.

Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.

I'm not creating the universe. I'm creating a model of the universe, which may or may not be true.

Maybe dark matter is denser than we usually assume, kind of like the Milky Way plane.

It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

Both religions and musicals work best with energetic and committed believers. Cynicism or detachment would have destroyed the magic - something true of religion, too.

Physicists have yet to understand why the Higgs boson's mass is what it is.