“The sight of the starry sky on a clear night, gives a kind of enjoyment that only noble souls feel. In the universal silence of nature and in peace of mind, the secret cognitive power of the immortal spirit speaks an ineffable language and transmits inarticulate concepts that are heard and cannot be described”. Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)
Where does light come from?
It comes from the sky.
All the light around us comes from cosmos only.
Two and a half million years ago, a first hominid raised up his eyes for the first time, from the ground to the sky, and realized in that incredible instant, what he got above his head. From that remote moment onwards, humanity has never stopped observing space and has always had within its culture, the awareness of the universe and of the light coming from the sky. Bronze Age (3300 – 1200 BC) – Stonehenge, Babylonia, Maya, Ancient Egypt. Ancient Greeks VII BC – I BC, Tolomeo AD 150. Middle Ages (V – XV sec) – Arabs. Copernico 1543, Giordano Bruno 1584, Tycho Brahe 1588, Keplero 1600, Galileo Galilei 1632, Newton 1686, Huygens, Cassini 1665, Halley 1682, Bradley 1729, Lagrange 1773, Messier 1774, Herschel 1781, Lapace 1798, Fraunhofer 1814, Bessel 1838, Galle 1846, Wolf 1848, Bunser, Kirchhoff, Secchi, Huggins, Lockyer, Einstein 1916, Shapley 1917, Hubble 1929, Lemaître 1931, Tombaugh 1930, Zwicky 1933, Oppenheimer 1939, Alpher Gamow Herman 1948, Penzias Wilson 1965, Bell Hewish 1967, Guth 1981, Perlmutter Schmidt Reiss 2011, LIGO/VIRGO 2016 …
Contemplation.
Experience of slowness, of thought itself.
Contemplation is research.
Truth.
Conscious observation, sense perception.
Motionless activation.
Preparation.
Potential.
Contemplation is gratitude.
If we abandon our soul and its method of knowledge, we lose ourselves and renounce happiness.
“You become what you contemplate”. Gustave Flaubert
Universe.
Matter and energy, space and time.
To the best of our knowledge, the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, it is flat, homogeneous and isotropic. It is composed of 4% radiation and common matter (electrons, protons, neutrons and neutrinos), organized according to the 4 fundamental forces (electromagnetic, gravitational, weak and strong). It is composed of dark matter for 23% and dark energy for the remaining 73%, of which we know absolutely nothing beside that it exists. This universe is invisible to any form of light: it is literally around us, it passes through us, but we cannot see it.
The universe, which has always fascinated mankind, at the same time resizes us, emptying everyday worries of importance and showing the misery of the principles that govern our world, engaged in a race for power and personal accumulation of wealth, one to the detriment of the other. The sky and the stars are eternal witnesses of the spectacle that mankind has staged throughout history and reveal to those who have eyes to see it, that the only true original need of human beings is that of being recognized, seen, loved and protected, in a life whose meaning we have no way to understand.
Additional video credits: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, Genna Duberstein and Scott Wiessinger, Producers. 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. Solar flares are gigantic explosions of light and x-rays, or coronal loops, which are stream of solar material travelling up and down looping magnetic field lines. Dom Leroy, Bristol UK. Astrophotographer and generous soul. Equipment | Celestron Inspire 80AZ Refractor Telescope | iPhone 11 Pro Max
Directed by Laura Scatena.