The universe is very big - there's about 100,000 million galaxies

Host: The night sky stretched above the cliffs, vast and endless, a cathedral of darkness punctured by a thousand burning points of light. The sea below roared, crashing against the rocks like a great creature breathing in time with the cosmos. The wind was cold, biting, and alive, as if it carried messages from the stars themselves.

A fire crackled nearby, its light flickering on the faces of two figures sitting by the edge — Jack and Jeeny, wrapped in scarves, their eyes turned upward toward the infinite. The sky seemed to lean down toward them, silent, mysterious, and eternal.

Host: It was the kind of night when the universe feels closer than the earth beneath your feet — when questions outnumber answers, and wonder outweighs fear.

Jeeny: (whispering, almost in awe) “Jocelyn Bell Burnell once said, ‘The universe is very big — there’s about 100,000 million galaxies in the universe, so that means an awful lot of stars. And some of them, I’m pretty certain, will have planets where there was life, is life, or maybe will be life. I don’t believe we’re alone.’”

Jack: (half-smiling, his voice low, carried by the wind) “She was a dreamer, that one. Discovered pulsars, listened to the heartbeat of dead stars — and still found time to believe in life among the infinite.”

Host: The fire snapped, throwing sparks into the dark, tiny embers rising like mocking stars trying to join the real ones.

Jeeny: “Not just believe. She knew. You can hear it in her tone — that quiet certainty. You can’t look at the vastness of it all and still think we’re the only ones here. It would be arrogance of the highest order.”

Jack: (gazes upward, his grey eyes reflecting the starlight) “Or maybe it’s the opposite — humility. Maybe the absence of proof isn’t proof of absence, but it’s all we have. We’ve been listening for decades, and the silence is deafening.”

Jeeny: (shakes her head gently) “Silence doesn’t mean emptiness, Jack. The universe speaks in patience. Think about it — it took Jocelyn to notice a tiny, rhythmic pulse that others dismissed as noise. What if life is like that — a faint heartbeat, lost in cosmic static?”

Host: The wind shifted, carrying the scent of salt and burnt wood. The flames danced, their shadows stretching across the ground like ghosts of possibility.

Jack: “You sound like one of those who sees patterns in the clouds. Humanity’s always needed something beyond itself — gods, ghosts, aliens. Maybe the belief that we’re not alone is just another way of saying we’re afraid to be.”

Jeeny: “Afraid? Maybe. But it’s also hope. You talk about fear as if it’s weakness, but what if it’s the force that makes us reach further? Why else did we build telescopes, rockets, probes? Curiosity isn’t arrogance, Jack — it’s our most human trait.”

Jack: (laughs softly) “Curiosity also built the atomic bomb.”

Jeeny: (meets his gaze, unflinching) “And it also built vaccines, art, and love. Don’t twist the knife — you know as well as I do that discovery isn’t good or evil. It’s what we do with it that matters.”

Host: The stars above seemed to brighten, or maybe it was just their eyes adjusting to the infinite distance. The sea boomed, like a drumbeat in the belly of the world.

Jack: “You know what I think? I think we’re alone. Maybe not forever — maybe there was life, or will be, somewhere else. But right now, we’re a cosmic accident on a rock spinning around a dying star. And that’s enough miracle for me.”

Jeeny: (softly, almost tenderly) “But don’t you want there to be more? Don’t you feel that ache — that hunger — when you look up there? If there’s even a single other mind out there, even one spark of thought, it changes everything about what it means to exist.”

Jack: “And if there isn’t? Then it means this — this conversation, this fire, this stupid rock — it’s all we have. And maybe that’s even more sacred.”

Host: Jeeny looked at him then, the firelight flickering across her face, and for a moment, the stars seemed to pause.

Jeeny: “But Jack… think of what that says about us — that we’re the universe becoming aware of itself. Isn’t that beautiful, but also lonely? Don’t you see? If we’re the only ones, then the responsibility’s even greater. We carry every consciousness that ever was, or ever could be.”

Jack: (quietly) “So you’re saying either way, we’re not just human — we’re custodians of awareness.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. We’re the voice of creation, whispering back to itself across the void.”

Host: The fire crackled louder, as if applauding her words. The sea responded, roaring in the distance, its rhythm echoing the pulse of the stars — that same pulsing Jocelyn Bell Burnell once heard, mistaking it for an alien signal, calling it “LGM” — Little Green Men.

Jack: (smiling faintly) “Funny, isn’t it? She thought she’d found aliens, but it turned out to be the heartbeat of a dead star. Proof that even in death, the universe hums.”

Jeeny: “And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the hum is life’s memory — the universe remembering what it once was. Maybe the stars are graves, but also seeds.”

Host: The wind softened, and the flames danced lower, their light growing warmer, more intimate.

Jack: “You make it sound like poetry.”

Jeeny: “Maybe the universe is poetry — written in equations, sung in radio waves, whispered through cosmic dust. We keep reading it, even when we don’t understand the language.”

Jack: “And maybe we’ll never translate it. Maybe that’s why we keep looking — because wonder is its own reward.”

Jeeny: “Then we agree.”

Jack: (raising an eyebrow) “Do we?”

Jeeny: “Yes. You think being alone makes life sacred. I think believing we’re not alone gives it purpose. Either way, both ideas make us look up.”

Host: The silence that followed was not emptiness, but awe. The stars burned above them — some ancient, some new, their light taking millennia to arrive at this moment, to fall upon two small humans daring to ask the oldest question in existence.

Jack: (softly) “You know, when she said she didn’t believe we’re alone… I think she wasn’t just talking about aliens.”

Jeeny: (smiling, tears glinting like starlight) “No. She meant connection. Between stars, between people, between everything that breathes or burns.”

Host: The fire dwindled, leaving only embers, each one a tiny planet glowing for a moment before fading. The sky remained, eternal, indifferent, and yet strangely gentle.

Host: And as the first light of dawn began to touch the horizon, Jack and Jeeny sat in silence, not as believers or skeptics, but as witnesses — two small souls beneath a vast, breathing cosmos, united in one unspoken truth:

Host: Whether the universe is crowded or empty, alive or alone, it is listening — and so are we.