El último horizonte

What do we know about the universe? Without a doubt, a lot. We know its age, its structure, what it contains and how it evolved to become that space full of galaxies, stars and planets that we know. The story of how modern physics has come so far in the path of knowledge of the cosmos is also that of an extraordinary scientific adventure, especially if we consider that until just over a century ago we knew nothing about it. An incredible feat for which the astrophysicist and popularizer Amedeo Balbi accompanies us in the first part of this book. But then, do we already know everything? Of course not: although we are sure of the general structure of the cosmos, we still have to define all the details exactly. Balbi invites us to delve into the last frontiers in which astrophysical research develops, in search of confirmation of the inflationary theory, of dark matter, or of the explanation of the accelerated expansion of the universe. A frontier where we are far from finding a definitive answer to some basic questions: is the universe finite or infinite? If space and time have had a beginning, will they also have an end? Could the laws of nature be different? Are there other universes besides ours? To face these questions with the tools of science, we must go beyond the last horizon, where what happened at the origins of the universe is hidden from our eyes by a wall of fire, where the measurements we have made may no longer be valid. , where we may discover that the physics we have developed only describes a brief moment and a limited space of a much larger and unattainable cosmos.