Does the full moon affect people's behavior, you ask? Yup. It makes people think the full moon affects people's behavior.

One thing in life is for certain, the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.

We in astrophysics we think of the universe all the time. So to us, Earth is just another planet. From a distance, it's a speck. And I'm convinced that if everyone had a cosmic perspective you wouldn't have legions of armies waging war on other people because someone would say, "Stop, look at the universe."

When you're advancing a frontier it stimulates creativity to find solutions.

I think if everyone had the luxury to pursue a life of exactly what they love, we would all be ranked as visionaries and brilliant.

Where there's water on Earth, you find life as we know it. So if you find water somewhere else, it becomes a remarkable draw to look closer to see if life of any kind is there, even if it's bacterial, which would be extraordinary for the field of biology.

After your first job, is anyone asking you what your GPA was? No, they don't care. They ask you: Are you a good leader? Do people follow you? Do you have integrity? Are you innovative? Do you solve problems? Somebody's got to do that homework and redesign the educational system so that it can actually train people to be successful in life.