Many Investigators Feel Uneasy Stating In Public

If You Get A Drill And Drill Down 5km Beneath The Ground, It's Teeming With Life - Millions Of Tiny Living Fossils. They Resemble The Earliest Life Forms And Suggest That Life Started Under The Ground. The Bible Talks Of Eden As A Sunny Parkland With White Fluffy Clouds, But It Probably Ascended From The Region That We Now Associate With Hell.

The Temptation To Believe That The Universe Is The Product Of Some Sort Of Design, A Manifestation Of Subtle Aesthetic And Mathematical Judgment, Is Overwhelming. The Belief That There Is "something Behind It All" Is One That I Personally Share With, I Suspect, A Majority Of Physicists.

Very, Very Slowly, The Dwarf Remnants Of What Was Once Our Mighty Sun Will Cool And Dim, Until It Embarks On Its Final Metamorphosis, Gradually Solidifying Into A Crystal Of Extraordinary Rigidity. Eventually It Will Fade Out Completely, Merging Quietly Into The Blackness Of Space.

The Burgeoning Field Of Computer Science Has Shifted Our View Of The Physical World From That Of A Collection Of Interacting Material Particles To One Of A Seething Network Of Information. In This Way Of Looking At Nature, The Laws Of Physics Are A Form Of Software, Or Algorithm, While The Material World-the Hardware-plays The Role Of A Gigantic Computer.

Although Gravity Is By Far The Weakest Force Of Nature, Its Insidious And Cumulative Action Serves To Determine The Ultimate Fate Not Only Of Individual Astronomical Objects But Of The Entire Cosmos. The Same Remorseless Attraction That Crushes A Star Operates On A Much Grander Scale On The Universe As A Whole.