I agree, along with Carl Sagan, that we should eventually become a two planet species. Life is too precious to place on a single planet.

All kids are born geniuses, but are crushed by society.

The most likely possibility, favored by current data, is that the universe will die in Ice, not Fire. However, personally I believe that trillions of years from now, we (if we are still around) will have the technology to leave the universe, perhaps in an interdimensional life boat, and move to a warmer universe.

I would hope that the publicity around the Higgs boson would increase the public awareness of physics and cosmology.

Well, Congress gave us a billion dollars to dig the hole, this gigantic hole. Bigger, much bigger than the hole in Geneva, Switzerland. Then they canceled the machine and gave us a second billion dollars to fill up the hole. Two billion dollars to dig a hole and fill it up. That is the wisdom of the United States Congress and it really makes you wonder: Is there intelligent life on the Earth? Certainly not in the United States Congress.

In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and the stars is the distortion of space and time.

The best theory comes from string theory, which states that dark matter is nothing but a higher vibration of the string. We are, in some sense, the lowest octave of a vibrating string.