After 13.8 billion years of cosmic history,
our universe has woken up
and become aware of itself.
From a small blue planet,
tiny, concious parts of our universe have begun gazing out into the cosmos
with telescopes,
discovering something humbling.
We've discovered that our universe is vastly grander
than our ancestor's imagined,
and that life seems to be an almost imprectibly small [protobation]
on an otherwise dead universe.
But we've also discovered something inspiring,
which is that the technology we're developing has the potential
to help life flourish like never before,
not just for centuries but for billions of years,
and not just on earth but throughout