In the far, far future, essentially all matter will have returned to energy. But because of the enormous expansion of space, this energy will be spread so thinly that it will hardly ever convert back to even the lightest particles of matter. Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos.

The pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand.

Sometimes nature guards her secrets with the unbreakable grip of physical law. Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.

Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.

Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.

The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.

We are living through a remarkably privileged era, when certain deep truths about the cosmos are still within reach of the human spirit of exploration.

There may have been many big bangs, one of which created our universe. The other bangs created other universes.

I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for. He didn't find it, but we think we're hot on the trail.

You almost can't avoid having some version of the multiverse in your studies if you push deeply enough in the mathematical descriptions of the physical universe.

There are many of us thinking of one version of parallel universe theory or another. If it's all a lot of nonsense, then it's a lot of wasted effort going into this far-out idea. But if this idea is correct, it is a fantastic upheaval in our understanding.

There was a time when 'universe' meant 'all there is.' Everything. The whole shebang. The notion of more than one universe, more than one everything, would seemingly be a contradiction in terms.

Quantum mechanics broke the mold of the previous framework, classical mechanics, by establishing that the predictions of science are necessarily probabilistic.

The real reason why general relativity is widely accepted is because it made predictions that were borne out by experimental observations.

One of the strangest features of string theory is that it requires more than the three spatial dimensions that we see directly in the world around us. That sounds like science fiction, but it is an indisputable outcome of the mathematics of string theory.

The full name of string theory is really superstring theory. The 'super' stands for this feature called supersymmetry, which, without getting into any details, predicts that for every known particle in the world, there should be a partner particle, the so-called supersymmetric partner.

The funny thing is, I sometimes get the impression that some people outside of the field think that there's some element of security that we have in working on a theory that hasn't made any predictions that can be proven false. In a sense, we're working on something unfalsifiable.

The math of quantum mechanics and the math of general relativity, when they confront one another, they are ferocious antagonists and the equations don't work.

All mathematics is is a language that is well tuned, finely honed, to describe patterns; be it patterns in a star, which has five points that are regularly arranged, be it patterns in numbers like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 that follow very regular progression.

What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular is that the patterns are wondrous.

Black holes, we all know, are these regions where if an object falls in, it can't get out, but the puzzle that many struggled with over the decades is, what happens to the information that an object contains when it falls into a black hole. Is it simply lost?

Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.

First of all my golfing experience spans all corners of the World - Brazil, New Zealand, L.A. And I think the best place is when you play with friends. I particularly enjoy playing golf with my best friend, former Manchester United player Dwight Yorke. It is the best experience when we can get together on a golf course.

When you play a team sport all your life, you need to get out there sometimes and show some individualism in a sport where you play against the nature.

I remember the reason why did I start my golf. We had a four day game I was playing for Trinidad against the Leeward Islands. They had in their ranks Winston Benjamin, Curtly Ambrose and Kenneth Benjamin. To add to it, the track was a green top. The four day game lasted two days, so I had two days to play golf.

Good captains know the strengths and weaknesses of their teams and make decisions accordingly.

I try to read spinners and dictate to them, but they know very quickly if you're not reading them or if you're not confident.

I appreciate every batsman in the world for different reasons. If I want someone to tough it out in the middle, I'd pick Steve Waugh. If I want someone who I know is going to have the technique to survive, you want a player like Tendulkar.

I want to be a consistent individual. I want to be someone my team can depend on all the time.

After cricket I'd love to build a family, I'd love to get close to someone and have kids, see them evolve into something special.

I just want that someone in their 50s or 60s, when they talk about Brian Lara, they say 'I enjoyed watching that guy playing cricket.'

When I get to a ripe old age then talk of me as a great cricketer.

This is a moment I will cherish forever... the first man to score 500 runs.

I had some bad influences in my time and, if my parents weren't there to straighten me out, things might have gone haywire.

After accepting the captaincy at the beginning of the 1998 season, I immediately set high but attainable goals for the West Indies cricket team and myself.

Well, I think that I pretty much grew up grow up wanting to represent the West Indies.

When I wasn't doing well, I was too tough on myself but I truly tried to minimise it. So, I would always appreciate the fact that, things are not going to go well all the time.

When you succeed, you know, you can get swell-headed or you can be failing, and then you are all down in doldrums. So I try, as much as possible, to keep an even keel.

I fell in love with scoring a lot of runs. I never felt 50 or 100 were enough.

I've played with and against great players. I've been with Viv Richards, Richie Richardson and played against Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Jaque Kallis and Virat Kohli is up there with the very best.

My brother shaved a cricket bat out of a coconut branch... we played cricket with anything we put our hands on - a hard orange, a lime, a marble - anything we could use in the backyard or the streets.

My dad made sure he gave me everything, he sacrificed what he had to, to make sure I had what I needed to perform at the best level.

We West Indian cricketers are always proud to play for the West Indies and we know we are made up of different islands and different cultures but we have to be able to mesh together, to come together and perform as a team.

I have been captain in the past and I know what it takes to gel a team and get it going.

Every senior player has to play a part and help the skipper by performing their duties on the field and secondly by performing their duties off the field.

I don't see myself as a father figure but as someone who the younger players can come to and talk to about cricket. Not just batting but cricket in general and I am ready to impart with any information or advice I have.

When I was 21, I did not have that much pressure. I was sitting down on the bench... you know... cleaning Sir Vivian Richards's boots or doing something... getting ready to play international cricket.

MS Dhoni is an asset in any team he plays for.

MS Dhoni would know what's best for him. He has served Indian cricket very well.

When I was a kid, Test was the form of the game everybody wanted to watch.