“A serious search with negative results says something of profound importance,” Sagan argues. “We discover there’s something almost forbidden about life ... if it turns out we really are alone.” But clearly, Sagan is looking for a happier result. There may be no galumphing green Barsoomian giants to satisfy the fantasies of a romantic Brooklyn boy. But no doubt, there are even stranger discoveries to be made ... some totally new phenomenon perhaps ... Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

The Cosmos was originally all hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements were made in red giants and supernovas, and then blown off into space, where they were available for subsequent generations of stars and planets. Our sun is probably a 3rd generation star. Except for hydrogen and helium, every atom in the Sun and the Earth was synthesized in other stars. The silicon in the rocks, the oxygen in the air, the carbon in our DNA, the gold in our banks, the uranium in our arsenals, were all made thousands of light years away and billions of years ago. Our planet, our society, and we ourselves, are built of star-stuff.

All the elements of the Earth except hydrogen and some helium have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which are today inconspicuous white dwarfs on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

Because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

DELENN: The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff, we are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.