The solar system, our home, is a vast, majestic, and peaceful place. But think again. The formation of our solar system was a wildly chaotic birth, an ultimate survival story. The ancient, standing stones, temples, and pyramids were used to predict cosmic events and to worship the gods in the sky. But the first telescopes revealed a universe unlike anything we could have imagined. We began to see what was really out there, not gods, but planets, stars, and immense clouds of gas.