Lezioni di Storia | I confini del mondo | Paolo Ferri. I confini del sistema solare

When, on January 7, 1610, Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter and saw three mysterious little stars near the planet, he soon understood the enormity of this discovery: Jupiter had moons orbiting it, just as our Moon does the Earth. The boundaries of the world had suddenly shifted from Earth to the planets. Today we have discovered a belt of millions of new celestial bodies at enormous distances from the Sun, and then even farther, we have reached the edge of the tenuous but turbulent solar atmosphere. We have found the new edge of the world.

Paolo Ferri, a theoretical physicist, worked for nearly 40 years at the European Space Agency’s space center in Darmstadt, Germany, and in his career has directly experienced much of the history of European space exploration.

In collaboration with Editori Laterza.