Universe

‘Just like how Goldilocks liked her porridge. And two billion planets in the Goldilocks zone is a lot. It would, rationally, be far harder to believe we are the only one in two billion and it…’

What feels impossible now won’t always be. But don’t think of the bad times as unrelated to the good. The dark is how we see the light. We need the contrast. We don’t see all the stars in the day, do we?

What feels impossible now won’t always be. But don’t think of the bad times as unrelated to the good. The dark is how we see the light. We need the contrast. We don’t see all the stars in the day, do we?

‘Galileo called mathematics the language of the book of nature. And we are trapped inside that book. We are words in that language. So it is hard to read and absorb and appreciate what we are inside, what we are familiar with. Just as Marta said, there are patterns everywhere.’

We should see ourselves as aliens, Maurice, because to the rest of the universe that is who we are.

After so many years of feeling unnecessary to the universe, I felt truly needed. And it’s nice to be needed. It really is.

in mathematics, you realise that balance and symmetry is actually in everything, even when it feels like chaos or pain.

‘And ten billion of those stars are like our sun, and two billion have exoplanets on which the conditions for life are pretty much like ours. Two billion.’

mathematical purity is everywhere. We are inside it. Nothing is random. Not life, not death. Not even randomness.