Carl Sagan once said that “…astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.” It provides us with knowledge of the world in which we live; our place in the universe in which we have come to inhabit a mere moment in cosmic time. It provides the ability to turn back the cosmic clock and watch our universe unfold before our eyes. It grants us hope on the grandest of scales in answering questions that humans have asked since we first looked up at the night sky. And its natural beauty makes available inspiration and humble contentment. Astronomy brings us to places only conceivable by our imaginations, other places outside the realm of possibilities understood by the human brain. It takes us into the depths of space, across the universe and through time - it takes us to places we couldn’t otherwise go.
But astronomy provides more; it also provides a relationship with our universe and everything it contains. It tells us that we are part of something grand, something bigger than this tiny speck in the vast cosmic ocean. It tells us that our origins are in the interiors of collapsing stars, that the atoms inside our bodies were formed in these inconceivably large, hot and dense celestial bodies that appear as tiny specks in our skies. That gravity did its magic in building large scale structures in space that made interstellar gas into stellar nurseries, solar systems, asteroids and planets. It tells us that we live on an adequate planet whose host star is that of an ordinary one which is one of one hundred billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Of course, our galaxy also just happens to be one of one hundred to five hundred billion galaxies in our universe.
Our problem is in believing the notion that the universe is above us. Our universe may be all around us, but we are immersed within it. We continue to hurtle through the vastness of space while cosmological evolution continues to unfold. We always have been, and always will be, products of the Universe. Every person you have ever met, every pet you have ever loved, every forest you have ever walked through or flower you have ever smelt, river you have ever swam through or book you have ever read; their constituent atoms were once contained within stars, survived unimaginable explosions, continued to soar through space, and journeyed through the universe until they made their way here, on Earth. This allows for the most fundamental interconnectedness on the grandest of scales.
Does this not justifiably allow for the utmost of sincerest compassion towards all things? To possess a mind created by the Universe that has the capability to ask questions of the Universe and a body composed of cells which have been formed by the Universe for the basis of life whose fundamental task is to keep you alive is far more beautiful and inspiring than any religion could hope to achieve. Astronomy provides the knowledge that we may be of insignificance on the large scale of the universe, but our history is deeply rooted in space, and as long as our species exists, astronomy will provide us with keeping in touch with our origins.
