Back in 2008, Time Magazine interviewed Neil de Grasse Tyson, and asked him, “ What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?”  here is his answer:

"The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth the atoms that make up the human body are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures.

These stars, the high mass ones among them went unstable in their later years they collapsed and then exploded scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas cloud that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself.

So that when I look up at the night sky and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us.

When I reflect on that fact, I look up -- many people feel small because they're small and the Universe is big -- but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.

There's a level of connectivity.

That's really what you want in life, you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant you want to feel like a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you That's precisely what we are, just by being alive..."

Neil deGrasse Tyson

According to Planetary Astrophysicist Dr. Natalie Hinkel, exploring outer space makes us realize all of the possibilities for galaxies, stars, planets -- even life. The basic elements created within stars, or the raw ingredients required for life on Earth, needed to be present at exactly the right times in order for humans to exist -- which is pretty empowering, when you think about it.

Dr. Natalie Hinkel is a researcher at Vanderbilt University, studying the composition of nearby stars and how that may affect the make-up of planets orbiting those stars. She got her bachelor’s degree in physics and math at Oberlin College. Her work has brought to light a number of important (and technical) truths within the field, which she has sought to explain by leading multiple international collaborations. Natalie also observes planets that are outside of the solar system, or exo-planets, by using the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Telescope in Chile. She has studied exotic systems where planets. Her PhD is in Astrophysics from the School of Earth and Space Exploration, which combines the fields of geology, planetary science, and astronomy, at Arizona State University. Natalie has put together the largest catalog of element abundances measured in stars near to the Sun, called the Hypatia Catalog; it contains +65 elements in over 6000 stars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbYYc...

George V. Coyne, a Jesuit priest and astrophysicist who served as director of the Vatican Observatory for nearly 30 years,  “There is no conflict between science and religious belief,” he once told a television interviewer. “My faith is enriched by my science, and my science enriches my faith.”

Father Coyne rejected the view that science is the only way to true and certain knowledge, but he also challenged religious fundamentalists and proponents of the intelligent design movement, which he said reduces God to a “dictator God … who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly.”

“God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity,” Father Coyne countered. In an evolutionary universe, he wrote, God, like a loving parent, “is not continually intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves.”

Similarly, he challenged his friend Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist who wrote in A Brief History of Time that when scientists finally come to understand the formation of the universe, “it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.”

Father Coyne described Hawking’s concept of God as “something we need to explain parts of the universe we don’t understand. I tell him, ‘Stephen, I’m sorry, but God is a God of love. He’s not a being I haul in to explain things when I can’t explain them myself.”

"The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." -Neil Degrasse Tyson

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an astrophysicist Professor in Oxford (UK) who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. She was credited with "one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th century", opening up a new branch of astrophysics -- work recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to her supervisor.

Subsequently she has worked in many roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. Increasing the number of women in science is important to her. In her spare time she gardens, listens to choral music, collects poetry with an astronomical theme, and is active in the Quakers (Religious Society of Friends).

Now, 51 years after she first noticed an odd bit of “scruff” in her observations, Bell Burnell has been awarded a $3-million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The prize committee not only cites her “detection of radio signals from rapidly spinning, super-dense neutron stars” but also her “lifetime of inspiring scientific leadership.”

Bell Burnell has spent her career working to lift up women and minorities in science. Need proof? She’s donating that $3 million to a charity in the U.K. whose mission is to support physics graduate students from under-represented groups.

While the saying “we are stardust” seems poetic but vague, it is literally true. The atoms of your body were created in the cores of stars billions of years ago. We should use this knowledge to draw closer to each other and share the joy and fear of our brief existence. Recorded at TEDxBaltimore January 2016.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to take the same career path as you?

The most useful thing I ever did in my early education was to join a debate team. Being an astronomer is very much about being comfortable with thinking on your feet and coming up with compelling arguments on the fly.

Once you're finished with school, I would advise you to not be too rigid or have too specific of an idea of where you want to end up. I wanted to be a research professor at a university, but that's not what happened. Opportunities crop up on their own schedules. You can't force them, and you've got to be able to respond to them when they do happen. I really believe that the changes in my career path were for the best. Maybe you'll meet someone who changes your ideas about where your career should go, or maybe you'll be offered a different sort of job than one you had originally planned. The most interesting careers I see are the ones that went in unexpected directions.

Haley Gomez works on using the most sensitive infrared cameras in space to reveal the origins of the building blocks of life - cosmic dust grains – and has published over 85 papers in the last 10 years. Her research has been recognized with an award from the Royal Astronomical Society for noteworthy contribution for an early career researcher. In 2015 she was also awarded a prestigious and highly competitive grant worth €1.8 million to measure the dust content of galaxies since the Big Bang.

Throughout her career, she has also taken a leading role in bringing research to the public and, in particular, encouraging girls and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. She received an Inspire Wales Award in 2014 for most inspirational person in the Science and Technology Category for this work. 

Albert Einstein: "A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness".