Some 5 billion years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth... then the sun will begin to die, life will be extinguished, the oceans will boil and evaporate away.

Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.

The visions we offer our children shape the future.

Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations. When it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we remember those who prepared the way - seeing for them also.

Time spent with children is time well spent. Their little minds are not constrained by 'reality' or focused upon goals. Anything and everything is possible. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

Some 5 billion years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth... then the sun will begin to die, life will be extinguished, the oceans will boil and evaporate away.

Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits.