I was born the same week NASA was founded, so we're the same age and feel some of the same pains, joys, and frustrations.

To assert that the universe has a purpose implies the universe has intent. And intent implies a desired outcome. But who would do the desiring? And what would a desired outcome be? That carbon-based life is inevitable? Or that sentient primates are life's neurological pinnacle? Are answers to these questions even possible without expressing a profound bias of human sentiment? Of course humans were not around to ask these questions for 99.9999% of cosmic history. So if the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.

I am proud to be part of a species where a subset of its members willingly put their lives at risk to push the boundaries of our existence.

I don't have specific television ambitions in the sense that I remain fundamentally and academic, and so, my innermost ambitions are what's the next discovery I can make; that's in my direct center.

If you're scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you, and that understanding empowers you.

If we want to unlock the secret behind the origin of our sun and its planets, it would be helpful to find some remnants from the birth itself, an event that took place about four-and-a-half-billion years ago.

85 percent of the gravity of the universe has a point of origin about which we know nothing.