Our modest star

Our Sun is only a smallish average star in a Universe where there are stars hundreds and thousands of times larger and grander.  Yet we owe all we are to it.  Our planet with its rich resources and wondrous vistas.  All flora and fauna on it.  Our very existence.  If it were to vary its energy output by a few percent, Earth and every living thing on it would perish.  One day, as the sun begins to grow old (it is already middle-aged) and expands to become a red giant, Earth will, indeed, perish, but long before then we can only hope we will have found another planet in a younger star system and, over several voyaging generations, have made it our new home.  This is the best argument for continuing a vigorous global pursuit of space programs.  If we do not do so, then the Universe will never know humankind, with all our scientific and sociological achievements, ever even existed.

This mesmerizing video (scroll down) displays the ultimate in abstract art, because absolutely nothing is or can ever be more important than what it depicts:

http://earthsky.org/space/red-giant-pi1-gruis-convection-granulation-bubbles

Phil