Until computers and robots make quantum advances, they basically remain adding machines: capable only of doing things in which all the variables are controlled and predictable. Robots are bad at pattern recognition and certainly at common sense. That's why computers can beat humans in chess but can't have even a basic conversation with a six-year-old.

The job market of the future will consist of those jobs that robots cannot perform. Our blue-collar work is pattern recognition, making sense of what you see. Gardeners will still have jobs because every garden is different. The same goes for construction workers. The losers are white-collar workers, low-level accountants, brokers, and agents.

Growing new organs of the body as they wear out, extending the human lifespan? What's not to like?

Today's clunky smart glasses will be replaced by smart contact lenses. We'll command them by voice, blinking, or even thinking, to interact visually in 3-D with the Internet.

One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the night sky, it makes sense that someone is looking back at us.

To become a theoretical physicist ... you need to have a passionate love affair with the universe.

I would like to believe that crop circles are evidence of visitation. But there have been too many people who have admitted to creating these crop circles, and too many people who have shown how to make one on TV programs, so I have my doubts.