At every level in our inventory, nothing seems special about our Earth, our Sun, our Galaxy, our Local Group. Evidently, mediocrity reigns throughout. Such is our niche in the Universe.

... the blast signatures of a detonated supernova and that of a nuclear bomb are identical.

The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small.

It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can.

We tell them about Earth science, astronomy, plant science and marine science. But what we don't do is explain what the four basic sciences are and what the building blocks are. We go too broad too early. We don't go in depth enough.... You've got to understand the big picture of what science is and how all the sciences relate to one another. If you don't do that, you'll never get it and you'll never get a real interest in science.

It's quite conceivable that [life] will eventually spread through the
galaxy and beyond. So life may not forever be an unimportant trace
contaminant of the universe, even though it now is. In fact,
I find it a rather appealing view.