Articles & Interviews

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate!' ('Abandon all hope, you who enter!’) are the words written above the entrance of Hell in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. This iconic line from Italian literature resonates in my head when I think about the task of studying Nature. As hope must be abandoned by the damned because it will only cause great pain since it will never be satisfied, so too must physicists abandon something precious and intrinsic to every living thing when they begin to study Nature: bias. In fact, despite the fact that the study of Nature started from what we can perceive with our senses, over the centuries it has proved increasingly "counterintuitive", revealing phenomena inconceivable to the very same senses, challenging and ultimately surpassing our imagination. How is it possible that scientific research can go on despite this? How can physicists appreciate and study the unimaginable? Above all, how can we trust what we cannot see? These questions are the lighthouse of our journey through some of the most curious phenomena that Nature can offer us.