We have measured ourselves against the stars for our entire history. They have been our point of reference since the beginning. As above, so below. As within, so without. Our destiny, our fate, our undivided and complete being, encompassed by pin-points of light drifting across a vast black night.

For navigation and observation, the centre of the universe is still the Earth. The celestial sphere extending out from the core of our planet and into the entire expanse of the universe. To move and to see we must put ourselves at the epicentre of everything that there is.

But as we have stepped into space and the ground has fallen away beneath us, we have lost our most fundamental points of reference. No Earth below. No sky above. With no up and no down we spin weightless in the dark. There is now only one fixed point on which to stand. Our distances and our weights, our bodies and our souls, are now measured against that most monstrous and grotesque of convulsions, the beginning of space and time.