We as human beings since the beginning of our time on earth have loved looking up at the stars and imagining what it must be like to reach those distant heavens. Those who have traveled outside of the earth’s orbit have had the opportunity to star gaze in a very different fashion. Unlike the fascinating, familiar feeling we all get when viewing the heavenly constellations that we see from our earthly habitat, astronauts have unanimously experienced a stunning, somewhat eerie phenomenon as they viewed planet earth from the vastness of space. Frank White calls their life-changing experience “the overview effect.”

The “overview effect” is a kind of cognitive shift, a mind-blowing shift in our perspective. Most have characterized the effect as a state of awe and overwhelming emotion so powerful…