You know what time it is. It's time for Ask a Space Man. I'm your host Paul Sutter and you've got questions

and I have the answers. It's a very special transient episode today, so I'm going to get right

to the point. And the point is a little point of light above our heads. This is a question I got,

actually when I first started the podcast a year ago, I got this question, but it was too late

to answer it, and you'll see why. And so I had to wait a whole year to

answer it. So now I'm super excited because I get to talk about it. Yay. Anyway, the question is,

what was the Christmas star? The story of the star of Bethlehem. Is there any, like,

scientific evidence or astronomical evidence for the existence of this star.

And thanks a lot to Brian Redmond for asking it.

First thing I should say is that if you're a miracle-y type person,

if you're the kind of person that believes in miracles, then you're done, right?

It could be a miracle.

And that's the only answer you need. And that's fine.

But this kind of question is fun to talk about because this story, the story of the birth of Jesus

and the star of Bethlehem and the wise men coming from the east. This is a story that has been passed down to us through the

ages. You know, the story is around 2,000 years old. And it's interesting to look at these stories

or stories like this just to just to see what's going on. Is there anything, you know, that could inspire the story or elements that are true, you know?

And one of my favorite things about science and astronomy is if we want to ask these kind of questions,

like was there anything funny going on in the sky 2,000 years ago?

We can know that because we have math.

And math is awesome.

Math lets us run the clock backwards 2,000 years.

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