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The particle and the planet are subject to the same laws and what is learned of one will be known of the other.

Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets.

The most remarkable discovery in all of astronomy is that the stars are made of atoms of the same kind as those on the earth.

We do care about planets like the Earth because by now we understood that life as a chemical system really needs a smaller planet with water and with rocks and with a lot of complex chemistry to originate, to emerge, to survive.

When I was a little kid, we only knew about our nine planets. Since then, we've downgraded Pluto but have discovered that other solar systems and stars are common. So life is probably quite prevalent.

The only thing I know is that we came from the stars, and that we have the same material as the stars. That's all that I know. Everything else I don't know.

Earlier generations of stars in the galaxy could well have had planets. But really, there was only hydrogen and helium to work with, so they'd all be gas giants and not small, rocky planets.

For many centuries, humans have speculated that there might be planetary systems around other stars and that there could be extraterrestrial life there and even intelligent being. However, those were simply speculations, and now we have evidence for the first part of these ideas.

Everybody has busy lives, but you can tell people, 'Go outside and look at the night sky. We've been able to demonstrate that every star you see probably has a planet around it.'

As chief scientist, it's sort of my job to look at bridges between what we do and to see the connections. But when we try to understand how are planets around other stars habitable... to looking back at the Earth - how are the changes that are taking place, how are they going to affect humanity?