How do we change the way science is taught?Ask anybody how many teachers truly made a difference in their life, and you never come up with more than the fingers on one hand. You remember their names,...
There is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.
For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon, and the moon wasn't just bigger, it was better. There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive.
Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public...
…I learned in biology class that more bacteria live and work in one centimeter of my colon, than the number of people who have ever existed in the world. That kind of information makes you think twice...
Scientific inquiry shouldn't stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.
Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.
Looking more closely at Earth’s atmospheric fingerprints, human biomarkers will also include sulfuric, carbonic, and nitric acids, and other components of smog from the burning of fossil fuels. If the...
During the heat of the space race in the 1960s, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ballpoint pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. Afte...
There is no science in this world like physics. Nothing comes close to the precision with which physics enables you to understand the world around you. It's the laws of physics that allow us to say ex...
I'm perennially intrigued how people who lead largely evidence-based lives can, in a belief-based part of their mind, be certain that an invisible, divine entity created an entire universe just for us...
Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.
Without a doubt, the most spectacular way to die in space is to fall into a black hole.
When you are 31 years, 7 months, 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 20 seconds old, you’ve lived your billionth second.
When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.
Some molecules - ammonia, carbon dioxide, water - show up everywhere in the universe, whether life is present or not. But others pop up especially in the presence of life itself. Among the biomarkers...
Science’s skeptical core makes it a poor competitor for human hearts and minds, which recoil from its ongoing controversies and prefer the security of seemingly eternal truths. If the scientific appro...
Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I'll stay down here and get the data. But nobody's ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody's ever named a high...
Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.
I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody's easiest course at school and our species would not hav...