Una storia cosmica di luce e oscurità

Talk by Ersilia Vaudo on the occasion of the publication of La velocità del buio (Einaudi). Light is one of the great questions around which poetry, philosophy, art and science have met. From Homer to Goethe, from Newton to Einstein, investigating it has been a way of exploring the very nature of the world. But even before reaching our eyes, light was already there. Its story begins with the Big Bang, when the universe begins to expand and cool. From the apparent darkness of the primordial plasma the first photons emerge, light separates from matter, the first stars ignite, and billions of galaxies take shape. In one of these it happens that on a planet, Earth, extraordinary circumstances occur: the transparency of water and air, the evolution of our perceptual systems, the possibility of seeing that light. Amid paradoxes and surprises, Ersilia Vaudo retraces