One of the most significant events in our distant past is still perhaps the greatest mystery: the origins of life itself.

Trillions of years into the future, when all stars are gone...all parts of the cosmos will cool to the same temperature as the ever-cooling background. At that time, space travel will no longer provide refuge because even Hell will have frozen over. We may then declare that the universe has died-not with a bang, but with a whimper.

I'm fascinated by the deaths of stars and the havoc they wreak on their environments.

If you're denying God's power, that means you don't really believe they were miracles, and so then why believe they happened at all. What you're saying is you're taking the Bible's account as literally true in need of a scientific explanation rather than just people coming up with stuff to fulfill their religious missions.

We should not measure our space-faring era by where footprints have been laid.... We should measure our era by how many people take no notice at all. A legacy rises to become culture only when its elements are so common that they no longer attract comment.

When you're a hammer (as the saying goes), all your problems look like nails. If you're a meteorite expert pondering the sudden extinction of boatloads of species, you'll want to say an impact did it. If you're an igneous petrologist, volcanoes did it. If you're into spaceborne bioclouds, an interstellar virus did it. If you're a hypernova expert, gamma rays did it.

The iron from that meteorite and the iron from your blood have common origin in the core of a star.