I did it. I got up at two-thirty on the morning of August 12 to watch the annual meteorite show. For those who haven't heard of it let me assure you it is not an extravaganza put on by the networks to draw viewers. The show is a natural wonder of the universe. The earth passes through a band of asteroids that inhabit an area beyond our stratosphere. When the earth's atmosphere pulls one of those rocks to close it is pulled in and burned up. What we see is what used to be called a shooting star. We do not see the rock as a pinpoint of light until it burns.

It is impossible to imagine what the earliest peoples thought of the spectacle. Did they consider it out of the ordinary. Some fiction writers (and anthropologists) believe that those animals who discovered living upright cowered in fear of natural phenomena. I don't believe it. Scientists' observations do not support that idea. Animals accepted nature, ran from fire because they couldn't breathe near it, turned their rears to storms and waited them out, flipped up tails and frolicked in flash thunderstorms as excited by the ozone as it moved through the soil.

Did we come down from the trees because trees became scarce? Or did the development of a flexible wrist make swinging from branch to branch less secure? Or did discovery of food on bushes and underground make foraging easier? No matter. Whatever happened worked because here we are several millions of years later a successful species.

The shooting star is still a thing of wonder. I know the science of it and that does not diminish the thrill of seeing the flash across a small piece of my sky. In truth science magnifies the wonder of it all. Image a large hunk of rock getting so hot it burns up! That opens more questions about the atmosphere and possibilities of meteorites hitting the earth, dinosaurs disappearing and oil developing from plants in the bowels of the earth. Wow!

Every time a new technology is developed we can see deeper into the larger universe and deeper into the macro cells that are the essence of life. You'll find me tuned into the sky every year, same time, same station to marvel at the physics of it all.