Initial steps for this symposium began a few billion years ago. As soon as the stars were formed, opacities became one of the basic subjects determining the structure of the physical world in which we live. And more recently with the development of nuclear weapons operating at temperatures of stellar interiors, opacities become as well one of the basic subjects determining the processes by which we may all die. -- Opacity Calculations: Past and Future, by Harris L. Mayer

I agree with Randall Munroe that it is an awesome opening paragraph for a physics paper