The telescope has been with me since I was a child; I used to break it down into its smallest parts to try to understand how and why it worked. In the city, hand-held, looking up, it didn’t work very well. . . . It was not until I was 19, and without telescope, peering into a late-night, deep, dark and clear, West Texas sky that I could "see" into the depths of the universe: Where did all this come from? What’s happening out there? Does it ever end, -in time, -in space? Why is it? Will anyone ever really understand? I doubt it.

In the late 1930’s it was found that the tiniest nuclear and sub-nuclear stuff, under the right conditions, provided the fires to keep the entire universe alight. Then, . . . this most energetic process, given into the hands of man, was used to take more than 140,000 lives at Hiroshima and another 70,000 at Nagasaki. Would anyone ever truly comprehend that? I doubt it, not even those who were there.