Take an ordinary TV set, the old fashioned kind, before cable. All you need to do is change the channel until you come between two stations. Most of that static comes from stray local radio waves hitting these rabbit ear antennas, but amazingly, about one percent of the snow and noise comes from microwaves produced in the Big Bang itself. Right now, we’re all eavesdropping on the birth pangs of the cosmos

On our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history. What we do with our world right now will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, greed, or stupidity, we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet, to enhance enormously our understanding of the universe, and to carry us to the stars.