Canon Angela Tilby

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. All the way to Prism and Prisma.fi-servoir. Loita ilmainen kokeilu Shopify.com-sivustolla. Professor Brian Cox, have expressed their dismay at the decision.

George Rall Bank lies in the Cheshire countryside. You can see its famous Lovell telescope from the train. Since 1957, the radio telescope has been listening to echoes coming from deep space, enabling new discoveries to be made about galaxies, black holes and star formation.

Its saucer shape has always reminded me of a great listening ear, open to the universe beyond what the eye can see, and to cosmic events far older than life on Earth. There's a romance and beauty in radio astronomy

that has drawn many brilliant minds to grapple with the mysteries of space and time and to our place in the cosmos. I share the lament of a university chaplain at Greenwich who commented on social media that there's something deeply symbolic and sad

about a country that closes its eye to the universe. It feels like an existential withdrawal, a kind of parochialism. The instinct to explore the heavens is not a matter of idle curiosity. Somehow we seem to know that if we can understand more about our universe,

we'll also come to understand more about ourselves. In recent centuries we've learnt so much, not least that our bodies are made of the basic elements of the universe. We are the stuff of stardust spewed out from ancient galaxies. The insights from science begin here to echo the language of faith. As the psalmist puts it, when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have ordained. What are mortals that you should be mindful of them, mere human beings that you should seek them out? Compared with the magnificence of the galaxies, we humans might seem to be of little significance. But surely it is just this curiosity, this compulsion to see beyond ourselves, or in the case of radio astronomy, to hear beyond ourselves

that makes us distinctive. You have made them little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour. Whilst we can all understand the pressures of managing big budgets, it would be a sad day for Britain if, as some fear, the proposed cuts lead to the closure of Jodrell Bank. For nearly 70 years, it's been an iconic symbol of our contribution to world radio astronomy.

We can only hope that if it is closed, other ways are found for its work to continue. We surely need to hear the sound of the stars to get an inkling of our true human significance and destiny. That was Thought for the Day with Canon

Angela Tilby. Brings us to 10.