Author: Miriam Frankel, Senior Science Editor

If you’ve ever looked up at the night sky and felt a sense of awe at the enormity and mystery of the universe, you’re not alone. We humans are curious animals, but understandably focused on our day-to-day existence. Looking up at the stars gives us valuable perspective. It reminds us that everything familiar to us, all our aspirations and problems, are confined to a tiny speck in one of trillions of star systems, nestled among hundreds of billions of galaxies. The science of cosmology deals with that vast, inconceivable expanse out there, beyond the precious, fragile home we call Earth.…