The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to minus 271.3*C – not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it.

To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.

Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

I think we have a good chance of surviving long enough to colonize the solar system.

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.