'As a fraction of your tax dollar today, what is the total cost of all spaceborne telescopes, planetary probes, the rovers on Mars, the International Space Station, the space shuttle, telescopes yet to orbit, and missions yet to fly?' Answer: one-half of one percent of each tax dollar. Half a penny. I'd prefer it were more: perhaps two cents on the dollar. Even during the storied Apollo era, peak NASA spending amounted to little more than four cents on the tax dollar.

This influential, yet controversial idea requires that the mixture of species on Earth at any moment acts as a collective organism that continuously (yet unwittingly) tunes Earth's atmospheric composition and climate to promote the presence of life... But I'd bet there are some dead Martians and Venusians who advanced the same theory about their own planets a billion years ago.

Aliens might be surprised to learn that in a cosmos with limitless starlight, humans kill for energy sources buried in the sand

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

The most successful scientists in the history of the world are those who posed the right questions

Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.

WhenIWasYourAge: We had to open all doors by ourselves. None of them knew we were coming.