Interview with the author Neil deGrasse Tyson

What is our greatest cosmological achievement?

In a vibrant civilization, one that values exploration and discovery, achievements are ongoing, and often exponential in pace.

For this reason, I don’t rank achievements, I merely observe them. That being said, I think the greatest achievement in all of civilization is the awareness that the Universe is knowable: that its deepest mysteries are tractable with science.

Do we know how the Universe began?

The Big Bang is a tight description of the early Universe, bolstered by successful predictions it makes about the Universe we inhabit 14 billion years later. But it opens doors to the next round of questions, not previously visible to us. What was around before the Universe? Are there other universes? Will the Universe end? If so, how? Thirty years ago, we didn’t have the luxury of asking those questions because they were not visible to us from the point at which we were standing. What we call dark matter and dark energy in the Universe, on the largest scales, account for 95 per cent of what’s out there, yet we have no idea what they are. We know less than 5 per cent of what’s driving the Universe, but that 5 per cent contains all our known laws of physics, chemistry, and biology.

What are the questions you would most like answered?

Are we smart enough to figure out the questions we’ve posed to ourselves? And, more importantly, are we smart enough to even know what questions to ask?