We might discover life in other solar systems someday, but for now there’s nothing but chaos and blackness and desolation for billions of light-years in every direction. Yet here in the middle of all that is this magnificent place, this brilliant blue planet, teeming with life. It really is a paradise.

I can remember with perfect clarity the night we found Jupiter.

“The problem with Challenger wasn’t the machine. The machine was trying to talk to us, but we didn’t listen.”

It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t lived here how much we start to miss nature. In the future there will be a word for the specific kind of nostalgia we feel for living things.

Human intelligence is not a gift. It’s an occasionally useful plague.

We wouldn’t exist without the obliterating smack of cosmic rock that plowed itself into the ancient Yucatán. Both stories are present in that moment. The rise and the fall are inextricable.