Cosmic Perspectives from Amid the Stars

For as long as humans have been telling stories, we’ve dreamed of worlds beyond our own. Today those worlds are no longer mere stories. We live in a golden age of exoplanet discovery. An exoplanet is any planet that exists beyond our Solar System, and since the 1990s, we’ve confirmed over 6,000 of them. It’s safe to assume that planets would exist around other stars. After all, there’s nothing special about the Sun. It’s a very average star.

When you look up at the night sky, you’re not only looking out into space, but also back in time. You’re seeing stars that exist hundreds to thousands of light-years away, and that means you’re looking back hundreds to thousands of years into the past.

Are we alone? It’s a question that humanity has long asked itself. Is the universe beyond this rock we call Earth teeming with life, or is biology a fluke never to be repeated? The only way to know the answers is to hunt for them ourselves.

We live in an age of light. At night, we travel by streetlight and read by lamplight. The dark of night no longer hinders our ability to simply live. As much of a blessing as this feels, it can also be a curse. Less than a hundred years ago, anyone, anywhere, could look up into the sky and see the bright swath of the Milky Way, but that becomes less and less true every day for those living in the modern age of electric lighting.