A Sky Full of Stars

What do you feel when you gaze into a sky full of stars? This question, as simple as it may sound, can reveal so very much about who we are. There is something so primally human about staring at the vast expanse of space, wondering just what our place is in this universe. From the earliest humans to the most cutting-edge scientists, this fascination with the great celestial horizon has pushed our species forward. The more we understand about this breathtaking cosmos we inhabit, the more we feel drawn to knowledge, drawn the mysteries yet to be solved.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is." Douglas Adams remarked in his humorous sci-fi series, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. For me, just thinking about the sheer size of the known universe is a rather humbling experience; when I look at the stars I cannot help but feel small but also infinitely part of something much, much bigger. When I was around seven or eight years old my parents bought me a telescope, my father in particular took an interest in showing me the constellations and other heavenly bodies that filled the night sky. From Orion's Belt to the Milky Way, Cassiopia to Polaris the North Star, each speck of light a had story to tell. I felt part of a tradition passed down for thousands of years, from generation to generation.

Looking at the stars is so deeply ingrained in the human narrative, a tool for the imagination as well as the physical world. The stars helped us to create stories and myths, to plant crops and to navigate sea and land, they have truly allowed our society to advance. Before humanity could even comprehend the concept of anything beyond our own planet, space had captured our collective interest. As our understanding of science expanded our views of the universe passed from the realm of mysticism and legend to that of facts and logic, outer space became a tangible place. The prospect of interstellar exploration fascinated our species long before the technology to do so was even conceived. 

Science changed our perspective, imagination took us that next step forward. Jules Verne, for instance, wrote the novel From the Earth to the Moon more than one-hundred years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface. When we had just barely scratched the surface of spaceflight, minds like Gene Roddenberry who created Star Trek and George Lucas creator of Star Wars, imagined a time where intergalactic travel is commonplace. Fantasy and scientific fact have both, in their own way, brought us closer to the stars. The great power of the human mind has helped us begin to boldly go where no one has gone before. 

As we imagine a brighter future, space is almost always part of that vision, part of that dream for a better tomorrow. Every astronaut, astronomer, astrophysicist and science-fiction writer started out as a child looking at the stars dreaming of something bigger. The spirit of exploration is as big a part of who we as the cosmos. Carl Sagan once famously said, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”  We are not only in the universe, we are the universe, each one of us infinitely connected to everyone and everything around us.