ABSTRACT
A typical big history course starts at the Big Bang and proceeds through the formation of galaxies and stars, gradually narrowing to a single star system, and then looking at the formation of a single planet, then narrowing further to look at the creation and spread of the living organisms that inhabit that planet, and it ultimately culminates with the impact and possible of a single species amongst those life-forms. What is needed is an explanation that allows for intelligent life to exist but which requires an incredibly high threshold before it occurs. With somewhere between 100 to 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, and possibly many trillion galaxies in the Universe, a number as small as one in a billion would still be far too high. This chapter seeks to present the argument that big historians should look to the heavens with more than just the goal of finding out where humanity came from.
