Our small world

The immensity of the universe -- the known universe -- is stunning, and its complexity and beauty awe-inspiring.

Spending an hour or two or three or more watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos," or the new generation featuring Neal DeGrasse Tyson, or some other science-based look at the universe, will change your perspective on life, at least for a little while.

When we are finely focused on the things in our lives that have our attention, we forget -- if we ever really knew -- just how tiny and insignificant we, and those things we are involved in are in the grand scheme of things.

And now, in the unknowable immensity of the universe scientists have found a star, Trappist-1, with several Earth-like planets orbiting it in our stellar neighborhood, about 39 light years away. These are the first such planets yet discovered outside our solar system.