The reactors in Japan are stable in the same way that a ticking time bomb is also stable. It wouldn't take much to light the fuse - a 6.6 earthquake, like what happened today in Japan, a pipe break, an over-pressurized containment vessel - anything could set it off, in which case we would have another Chernobyl, three times the magnitude of a Chernobyl accident.

Science is the engine of prosperity. But you'd never know it, listening to some of the politicians. They're lawyers and businessmen, not scientists. Lawyers and businessmen massage wealth; they don't create it.

It would take a civilization far more advanced than ours, unbelievably advanced, to begin to manipulate negative energy to create gateways to the past. But if you could obtain large quantities of negative energy-and that's a big "IF" - then you could create a time machine that apparently obeys Einstein's equation and perhaps the laws of quantum theory.

We are not at the end but at the beginning of a new physics. But whatever we find, there will always be new horizons continually awaiting us.

Scientists who have dedicated their lives to building machines that think, feel that it's only a matter of time before some form of consciousness is captured in the laboratory.

Science is given almost no visibility in the media. If a Martian came down to Earth and watched television, he'd come to the conclusion that all the world's society is based on Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. He'd be amazed that our society hasn't collapsed.

Faust was this mythical figure who sold his soul to the devil for unlimited power. The Japanese have made that Faustian bargain because they don't have coal, oil or hydro power.