Humans have come along at a rather propitious time in the life-cycle of the Universe. Earth has a moderate climate, we are free of major bombardments from large rocks in the Solar System, the Sun is nicely situated in a mid-life calm, and so on. We appear to have missed gamma ray sterilisation from exploding stars too. It's a real Goldilocks time, though I suppose, could they have critically reflected upon it, dinosaurs might have thought the same thing. Their reign was impressive, only ended by one of those nasty collision events that we have mercifully been spared. There is a big rock with our name on it somewhere, though not in the foreseeable future.

It's also a great time to be looking out into the Universe at large. We can see its origins in the ancient light that we receive, information that has often travelled billions of years. Imagine being a photon bridging such an expanse and over such a time, now a part of scientific observations by sentient beings! Sure, one is conscious and the other is not, but there is something beautiful and inexplicable in this exotic embrace.

It is speculated by cosmologists that, because of the increasing rate of expansion of the Universe, there will come a time (in about 150 billion years) when future observers in the now-merged Andromeda/Milky Way Galaxy will only be able to see the light from the stars of their own galaxy. What they mean is this - the light from other galaxies will never reach us again, since they are racing away at faster than the speed of light. Entirely new civilisations, should they emerge, will have no record of what happened in the beginning, that information being beyond reach. In effect, the Universe will be their own galaxy with its stars and nebula and black holes.

So we are very lucky indeed. It is a good time to be around.