I learned that once it's over, it's really over, and to not take anything for granted.
Studying cancer could provide huge insights for astrobiologists into the nature of life itself.
Science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview. . . even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a law-like order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us.
The anthropic principle is an unfortunate name as it implies something about humanity.
Mathematics is universal. It's discovered by human beings, but the rules of mathematics are the same throughout the universe and the laws of the universe.
If we're looking for intelligence in the universe I think everybody assumes that this has to start with life and so the question is: "How likely is it that there will be life elsewhere in the universe?"
You've got to get away from the idea cancer is a disease to be cured. It's not a disease really. The cancer cell is your own body, your own cells, just misbehaving and going a bit wrong, and you don't have to cure cancer. You don't have to get rid of all those cells. Most people have cancer cells swirling around inside them all the time and mostly they don't do any harm, so what we want to do is prevent the cancer from gaining control. We just want to keep it in check for long enough that people die of something else.
All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of detail can be drawn on when you write fiction.
I have great samples of my drums and I try to program them pretty much how I want to play them, try and make it feel natural even though it's programmed.
I think 99% of climate scientists would agree that we need to reduce emissions as quickly as possible, and then begin removing greenhouse gasses and carbon from the air. And if we don't do that we are looking at some range of catastrophe.
Sad company is bad company.