If you ask people where they're from, they will typically say the name of the city where they were born, or perhaps the place on Earth's surface where they spent their formative years. Nothing wrong with that. But an astrochemically richer answer might be, 'I hail from the explosive jetsam of a multitude of high-mass stars that died more than 5 billion years ago.

This fits in with what I saw in staff in astronomical facilities and was reporting to the management team: 10-14% Oxygen: Emotional upset, abnormal fatigue, disturbed respiration.

And as I looked at the star, I realised what millions of other people have realised when looking at stars. We’re tiny. We don’t matter. We’re here for a second and then gone the next. We’re a sneeze in the life of the universe.

Do you ever look up at the stars and try to contemplate the ends of the universe?

Industrial liquid gas containers were left open and venting gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy. On reflection, I realized that I routinely observed mental and physical effects that match those of a low oxygen environment in staff that I supervised.

When discharging industrial gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy, we never wore breathing respirators that fed us oxygenated air at above the legally required 19.5% oxygen levels.

All high mathematics serves to do is to beget higher mathematics.

Working on the summit of Mauna Kea was comparable to working on the hospital pulmonary ward with sick people sucking on oxygen cylinders.

My memories of my time in high altitude astronomy indicate that there were no oxygen concentration monitors or alarms in the areas that liquid nitrogen was in use at the high altitude astronomical facilities where I had worked.

At the W.M. Keck Observatory on the very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, there was no routine monitoring of mental functioning, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure or heart rate of workers.