The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.

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

Chances are, the aliens will not want to land on our backyard, or even the White House lawn, with their flying saucers. They may have tiny, robotic self-replicating probes which can reach near light speed and can proliferate around the galaxy. So instead of the Enterprise and huge star ships, the aliens might actually send tiny probes to explore the universe. One might land on our lawn and we won't even know.

One day when I was 8 years old, everyone was talking in hushed tones about a great scientist that had just died. His name was Albert Einstein.

It's risky to allow radiation to constantly go up into the atmosphere. The main criticism of this approach of entombing it is that it would cost too much, involve too many resources and people. But think of the cost of having all the crops impounded by the government, all the milk being thrown into the river, people's livelihoods destroyed.

Scientists willing to risk their reputations on higher dimensions soon found themselves ridiculed by the scientific community. Higher-dimensional space became the last refuge for mystics, cranks, and charlatans.

It's humbling to realise that the developmental gulf between a miniscule ant colony and our modern human civilisation is only a tiny fraction of the distance between a Type 0 and a Type III civilisation - a factor of 100 billion billion, in fact. Yet we have such a highly regarded view of ourselves, we believe a Type III civilisation would find us irresistible and would rush to make contact with us. The truth is, however, they may be as interested in communicating with humans as we are keen to communicate with ants.