When I was a kid I used to lie on my back, look up at the stars and try to imagine, just what was out there. Aliens or other worlds, maybe some kid with pointy ears looking up at the sky like me. And every once in a while I would feel a chill run through me. A realisation that I was just a tiny part of the whole, that it was all so much bigger than me, and that there were so many questions for which I didn’t have answers. Not even a clue.

Poets will tell you that science diminishes the beauty of the stars by reducing them to superheated balls of gas. But I don’t think there’s a scientist alive who isn’t awed by the heavens. We’re all just kids lying on our backs on the lawn wondering where we fit in. We don’t see answers to diminish nature. We seek answers to discover who we are. And if our search takes us to unfamiliar or frightening places, we trust that nature will help us find a way out.