But a machine that was powerful enough to accelerate particles to the grand unification energy would have to be as big as the Solar System - and would be unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.

In this way, Edwin Hubble worked out the distances to nine different galaxies. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars.

The progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe.

I enjoy all forms of music - pop, classical and opera.

I don't believe that the ultimate theory will come by steady work along existing lines. We need something new. We can't predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already!

The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.

There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe and what can be more special than that there is no boundary?