We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born[Underlining not in the original]; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times -a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies, where there may be black holes and other universe and extra-terrestrial civilizations whose radio messages are at this moment reaching the Earth. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor.