I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life - this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can't be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don't have what we call intelligence, and they're surviving just fine.

One trait stands out in nearly all meteorites: metal; they've got it. So, the best way to find a meteorite is to hear it first.

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.

When a coincidence seems amazing, that's because the human mind isn’t wired to naturally comprehend probability & statistics.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the popular television soap opera As The World Turns portrayed sunrise during the opening credits and sunset during the closing credits... The soap-opera sunrise showed the sun moving toward the left as it rose rather than to the right. They obviously had gotten a piece of film showing a sunset and played it in reverse... Had they called their local astrophysicists, any one of us might have recommended that if they needed to save money, they could have shown the sunset in a mirror before they showed it running backward.

Hunting for meteorites is like trying to find a pebble on miles of beach.

The people talking on their cell phone and following GPS instructions to where grandma's house is saying I don't need space - excuse me, that's how you know where grandma lives, and when to make the left turn.