The Strait of Magellan

Children of the Stars is a trip through the history of the people of America and their vision of the sky. This series travels through Latin America to discover the secrets of ancient temples devoted to stars in the Universe and to visit the world’s largest astronomical observatories, following the path of prestigious scientists. This trip will show us how the cosmos inspires humanity and the arts.

This illuminating natural history series reveals a totally new perspective on wildlife at night. Over six months, a team of biologists and specialist camera crew explore the length of South and Central America to find out how animals have adapted to life in the dark.

I would like to take some poetic license in introducing this volume in a way that seems appropriate for a country, like Chile, that Iooks to the ocean. I believe it was Heisenberg who compared different times in physics with sailing a ship. He said that most of the time we keep our ships in port, or in the protection of a bay. But on a few occasions we go into the open sea, and those occasions are really the great times in theoretical physics, when everything can change. It does not seem totally unwarranted to hope that we are now entering one of those times. In that spirit, I would like to mention a wonderful book, which in English would be called something like Chile, Or a Crazy Geography.