The Power of the Night Sky | StarTalk

The night sky can inspire you on many, many levels. Most people's concept of God has their God residing in the sky, not under their feet in the dirt. There's a deep sense that what's above us is greater than us, bigger than us, more powerful than us; seems to be deep in our DNA. I don't know other animals that gaze upwards, and I wondered: could it be, for example, that most four-legged mammals are looking down?

Okay, they're looking for food. Looking up is just whatever. How are you even gonna do that? When does that arise? Plus, at night, they're asleep. But you know, we sleep at night as well; however, we are perfectly comfortable sleeping on our backs. Most animals in the entire Animal Kingdom, insects included, will never find themselves on their back. Never ever.

We are perfectly fine sleeping on our back at night. And what happens when you wake up? You gotta go pee in the bushes. You wake up at night and you're on your back; the sky is there for you to behold. I think the sky is a fundamental part of our life experience.

Add to this modern scientific knowledge that stars are born, live out their lives, and die. Some of them explode, and those that explode manufacture the elements from the periodic table of elements that comprise life as we know it. The more knowledge you have of the universe, the more majestic it is, and the more connected you are to it.

It's not, "We're here and that's there." It's that we're here, that's there, but our atoms and molecules were once there and now they're here. So there's a kinship with the cosmos that modern science has revealed to us.

So I would claim, no matter how you slice the question, what does it mean to look up, no matter who answers that question, they're going to tell you that looking up is something beautiful, something profound, something deep in more ways than one. It contains our destiny.