The spectacle of the night sky assembles the men from all parts of the world and every age of history. Probably, more than any other reality, the vision of the cosmos has served as a source of inspiration and a point of reference for the various cultures throughout history.
The multitude of feelings and of questions we experience when contemplating the starry sky - observed in a dark, silent night - awakens in us something innate, drawing us close to the most primitive of our ancestors. The vast excess of the celestial crowd and its beauty, contemplated slowly, come to us with the force of an announcement, potent, but veiled, wrapped in the irreducible mystery of the existence of the cosmos and things.
This experience naturally invites us, humans, to inquire. Perhaps it was part of that original spark that awakened our minds, not only to the logical and rational questioning of nature, but also to wonder before the world - after all, what is the reason and meaning of the existence of all things around us and, of ourselves?
Reason and wonder grounded the evolution of knowledge since antiquity and guided the work of great scientists and thinkers throughout history, such as Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Charles Darwin (1809-1882 ) and, to a certain extent, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), to mention only a few, from a myriad of examples.
Over the last 2,500 years, it is undeniable that science has succeeded in drawing an impressive panorama of the universe's history, from the first insignificant fractions of a second to the formation of the first atoms, of the great structures (stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc.) and the amazing diversity of life around us.
However, this picture is still partial. And, perhaps, will remain so, as defended by scientists who are dedicated to the area of cosmology - a unique science among the sciences, because it deals with the totality of all objects. After all, will there be final answers to questions like 'Where did all the matter that forms the universe come from?'; 'What was there before the Big Bang?', Questions with strongly metaphysical bias, and yet undoubtedly pertinent. In Newton's words: "What we know is a drop; what we don’t know is an ocean.”
In the past decades, science has described the series of facts in cosmic history with great precision. These results come to the encounter of the human intuition in search for meaning, both on the Earth and in the sky. This broad and impressive body of scientific knowledge reveals, in its essence, a deep harmony and order in nature, the basis upon which reality is built - and, in Einstein's words, it is surprisingly comprehensible by us.
The reverence and marvel that should have filled the minds of the most primitive rupestrian artists when observing the sky are now widened by such profound and unexpected discoveries, which the human genius has been able to reveal through models of high mathematical complexity and extremely sophisticated technological experiments.
In this way, the cosmic greatness is becoming ever more familiar and intimate to us. However, therein still lies the ingredients that feed the inexhaustible human thirst for knowledge: the unknown and the mystery. This desire to expand frontiers was summed up in a beautiful passage by the Italian poet Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936): "How is it possible that the question does not arise, if the Earth is forever surrounded by the stars?
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.”
