'Boldly going where hundreds have gone before' does not make headlines.

You get to say that the Earth is flat because we live in a country that guarantees your free speech. But it's not a country that guarantees that anything you say is correct.

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."

And extracting one molecule's signature in spectral analysis from the rest of the signatures is hard work, sort of like picking out the sound of your toddler's voice in a roomful of screaming children during playtime. It's hard, but you can do it.

We live in the kind of society where, in almost all cases, hard work is rewarded.

Part of knowing how to think is knowing how the laws of nature shape the world around us. Without that knowledge, without that capacity to think, you can easily become a victim of people who seek to take advantage of you.

I remain unconvinced that anything other than rapid decomposition is the fate of my body and mind after death.