Le particelle e l'Universo

The Andromeda galaxy

Looking into outer space means looking back in time. When you look at a galaxy a million light years away, you are looking at it as it was a million years ago. Looking at the sky at night is like reading the history of the Universe.

Looking into inner space - into the structure of matter - also provides a view back in time. Experiments today collide together particles at the highest possible energies in order to penetrate into the deepest layers of matter. The enormous concentration of energy leads to the creation of new matter just as when matter was first created in the initial instants after the Big Bang with which the Universe began.

creation of new particles in the ALEPH detector

Studies of the smallest structures in the Universe, in high energy particle physics are therefore intimately linked with observations in astronomy of the largest structures. This meeting point between particle physics and cosmology is one of the most fascinating aspects of modern physics. Indeed, through the scenario of the Big Bang, observations in astronomy have testable consequences in particle physics and vice versa.