Some of us only rarely stop to stare at the night sky, with the naked eye, let alone with binoculars or a telescope. And when we do, the heavens may seem to be majestic, peaceful, and eternal. This impression, however, is deceptive. The Universe is a magnificently violent place. Gigantic clouds contract and ignite, producing the large and fiercely burning globes that we call stars; these stars, in turn, can explode in flashes that are more luminous than millions of suns, and they can do this in a multitude of ways. Pairs of stars may coalesce, again giving rise to unimaginable outbursts of energy. Black holes may form, whose gravitational attracting force is so huge that neighboring stars, planets and gases may be accelerated to reach velocities nearing that of light, being torn apart in the process, unless they are black holes themselves.

At larger distance scales, events take place at much slower rates: galaxies devour smaller galaxies, black holes millions or even billions of times heavier than our Sun devour other objects in the central regions of galaxies. And the most catastrophic happening of all is the creation process of the Universe itself, the big bang.

Conversely, in other cosmic events, and at the smallest distance scales, atomic nuclei and subatomic particles are blown away and reach kinetic energies so enormous that no man-made laboratory, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, will ever be able to match them.