The place we call our Universe is, for the most part, cold and dark and all but endless. It is the emptiest of empties. It is old, and yet very young. It contains much that is dead, and yet much that is alive, forever reinventing itself, and sometimes inventing something wholly new.

In: S. Alan Stern (ed.), Our Universe: The Thrill of Extragalactic Exploration as Told by, Leading Experts