On A Mote Of Dust Suspended In A Sunbeam

There is something startling about natural scientists. A friend of mine recently dated a post-doc physicist, who needs 11 hours of sleep and says he wouldn’t even start thinking a thought without a timeframe of minimum five hours with no disturbance. They often have something philosophical about them, or at least, this is what I hear when I ask them stupid questions like how infinite is infinity. Their answers are calming and no-nonsense, and when they say ‘let me think about this’, they actually mean it.

Today I stumbled across the following quote by astronomist and writer Carl Sagan, that puts human existence neatly into perspective – in a way, of course, only natural scientists can do.