Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up.

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.

But my vote for Venus's most peculiar feature is the presence of craters that are all relatively young and uniformly distributed over its surface. This innocuous-sounding feature implicates a single planetwide catastrophe that reset the cratering clock... turning Venus's entire surface into the American automotive dream-a totally paved planet.

If we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.

In any case, the leading edge of our "on purpose" radio signals is 30 light-years away and, if intercepted, may mend the aliens' image of us based on the radio bubble of our television shows. But this will happen only if the aliens can somehow determine which type of signal comes closer to the truth of who we are, and what our cosmic identity deserves to be.

Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.

Scientific truth is not what any one scientist puts forth. It can be that, but it is generally not. It is the sum of multiple studies that all lean in the same direction in their results conducted by different people at different times of different nationalities with different competitive urges who all end up getting the same result. Then you have an emerging scientific truth, and then you put that in the textbooks, and that will never be shown to be wrong later on.