" The usefulness of mathematics allows us to build spaceships and investigate the geometry of our universe. Numbers may be our first means of communication with intelligent alien races. Some physicists have even speculated that an understanding of higher dimensions and of topology-the study of shapes and their interrelationships-may someday allow us to escape our universe, when it ends in either great heat or cold, and then we could call all of space-time our home. "

― Clifford A. Pickover