Science is really about individual experts reaching a consensus.

Typically in science, individual scientists make up their minds about scientific fact or theory one at a time. We don't take votes. We just don't vote on quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, why the sky is blue, or anything else.

Either data supports the observations or they don't. Voting doesn't work in science.

I like the planets because they are real places that you can go to and send machines to. Faraway astronomy - galactic astronomy and extra-galactic astronomy - is really cool stuff, but to me, it's about destinations.

The science has got to the point where you can actually do some genetic modifications. In this Olympics, the experts we have tell us they don't think it has been applied here. In future Games we have to operate on the assumption that there will be people out there willing to do it.

I tell public audiences, don't go to a podiatrist for brain surgery; don't go to an astronomer for planetary science.