Realized by Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), scientific director Prof. Roberto Battiston
Four centuries ago, Galileo aimed his telescope at the sky for the very first time and changed our way of looking at the universe for ever. No one back then could have foreseen the extraordinary developments in our ability to scrutinize the depths of the cosmos and to interpret its messages thanks to increasingly sensitive and sophisticated instruments and methods. To mark the international celebration of that revolutionary scientific gesture - 2009 has been declared International Astronomy and Galileo Year - the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, the National Nuclear Physics Institute, the National Astrophysics Institute and the Italian Space Agency are proud to present a major exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, telling the story of science, of scientists and of the great experiments involved in exploring the Universe today.
On display in the exhibition you will find telescopes and cosmic radiation detectors hosted in the most extreme environments on the planet to enable us to decipher and to interpret the language of the universe: light and the other elementary particles that constantly bombard us, echoing remote events which took place unbelievably long ago and unbelievably far away. These signals are picked up through experiments conducted at the bottom of the sea, deep in the bowels of mountain ranges, on the highest plateaux in the world or in the middle of vast deserts. They are also conducted in space, where sophisticated observers in orbit around the earth turn their probing eye toward the depths of the cosmos.
As you visit the exhibition, you will be involved in the work of scientists listening to and interpreting the messages of the cosmos in order to measure the breadth, depth and age of the universe, and to study its composition. This allows them not only to speculate on how it will evolve in the future, but also to go back in time to the very first moments of life, even managing to recreate those moments in the lab!
The scientists of yesteryear and of the modern era will accompany you on a virtual journey to explore especially what we do not know, to discover the great scientific challenges of the present day to which researchers all over the world are currently devoting their energies, and to probe the unanswered questions, the mysteries that have engrossed and enthralled mankind ever since he had nothing but his eyes with which to observe the heavens above him.
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