The Unfolding Universe: A Stellar Journey

There is hardly an area in our lives that has not been influenced by or does not owe something to astronomy. It has been the friend of the sailor exploring uncharted seas, the inspiration of the poet and artist, the source of mythology and astrology, the great arena in which theology was born and evolved, and the intellectual domain of the philosopher, to name but a few human activities that astronomy has enriched. The greatest chronicler of them all , William Shakespeare, conveyed his belief in the importance of astronomy to romance and music in The Merchant of Venice, where he had Lorenzo exhort Jessica to contemplate the heavens while the "sounds of music" crept in their ears and the "soft stillness and night" be.came "the touches of sweet harmony."
Astronomy is the queen of the sciences because it bore so me of our most important scientific principles; so now more than ever the stars, and the uni verse itself, are the ultimate laboratories where the high-energy particle physicists seek answers to some ofthe most perplexing problems about the nature of space and time and the origin ofthe universe. Indeed, astronomy has enabled us to grapple with some of the so-called "ultimate questions" about the nature of existence that scientists used to leave to philosophers and metaphysicists. We now have astronomical evidence that the universe originally began with a gigantic explosion that scattered the primordial ingredients of the cosmos thoughout space.