Quotes from Tim Radford

In a nutshell, the universe is 4% visible, 23% undetectable and 73% unimaginable. Welcome to the cosmos, full of mass you can measure but not manhandle, driven by a force you can infer but not explain.

Words are instruments, they are tools that, in their different ways, are as effective as any sharp edge or violate chemical. They are, like coins, items of great value, but they represent a currency that, well spent, returns ever greater riches.

Curiosity is not a thirst that can be slaked: it is a permanent condition. Every answer points to more and sometimes more profound questions. And knowledge, by itself, achieves nothing: we want more, we want something elusive, called understanding, or wisdom. We want both the big picture, and our place in it.

Everything will eventually be dismantled into its constituent atoms and molecules, and continue to exist as the raw material that could ultimately be drawn into the orbit of another nascent star, and some new evolutionary cycle might commence, with some new intelligent civilisation. There is no way of knowing.

The idea of truth as a consolation is a real one. We all face a death sentence, and we all want to believe in something that is demonstrably true. Religion in the shape of an institution, a set of dogmas and a body of doctrine, is not in this sense a help: it demands an act of faith, an acceptance that it must be true, even if, or especially because, empirical evidence is not available, and anyway, if you could see it was unarguably true, what would be the virtue of faith?