Where is the center of the universe?

There isn't one.

Would you ever consider living on Mars?

No. I'd need some good restaurants. [laughs]

Should we be sending people to Mars?

There are two answers to that and it's quite political, of course. Space flight is expensive. And if you're interested purely in scientific research, then I think you can send a lot of robots, because you can get more of them.

But, it's also true that human capability is far in excess of robots, so we need that. Most scientists would say they don't like space flights because it removes a lot of money from their activities.

On the second point, we're going to Mars because there is nowhere to else to go. Not to the other planets, so we have to stay here, or if we go anywhere, to Mars. But I think as a civilisation, we may need to start thinking of going somewhere.

Have you written any children's books, or will you?

It's tremendously difficult to write books for children. A friend of mine, Oliver Jeffers, wrote a great children's book. Every single word and sentence has to be so precisely constructed; it's an art, a real art. I've written for newspapers – you would well understand – and you can have different allowable paragraph lengths, and sometimes the shortest sentences in a paragraph are the most difficult ones to write. I would love to write children's books, but it's a skill I don't have now.

You're a wine lover. Why not write a book on wine?

I'm a big fan of wine writer Jancis Robinson. For wine, I'm still on the learning curve. I started collecting it to drink, but I don't collect it as investment; it's more like a sort of exploration. I like learning curves, so music and wine and other subjects make for interesting diversions. I get bored every five or six years, so science is about the only constant thing. I love red wines, like Bordeaux, but as I've got older, I find they are less easy to drink. So I like white Burgundies, and I very much like chardonnay and champagnes, blanc de blancs. It's a bit niche though, the study of white Burgundy, to write a book about.