Scienze ad alta quota

The high mountain is a valuable natural laboratory for many categories of scientists: geologists, meteorologists, climatologists, biologists,botanists, zoologists, physicists, astronomers.

Only in high mountains, in the last half century, astronomy and physics, the extremely large and the extremely small, were able to connect to such an extent that today it is almost impossible to talk about astronomy and cosmologywithout speaking simultaneously about physics and elementary particles.

The book, entirely focused on research stations in the high mountains, both in Europe and the world, is full of fascinating topics.

High altitude research stations mean all laboratories which are located at a minimum of 2.500 meters over the sea level.

Born in Europe in the late nineteenth century, at the dawn of modern science, now they're all over the world.

The oldest European observatory, for example, is on the Pic du Midi (2.877 m.) built in 1878, and thehighest laboratory in the world is on the Chacaltaya (La Paz) inaugurated in 1940 at 5.200 meters over the sea level.

The volume edited by Alba Zanini, also curator of Inventions Discoveries and Machines, in addition to speaking about the high mountain laboratories, focuses on the fascination that the high peaks have exercised on poets and artists, reconstructs the historical events of the early pioneers of scientific research at high altitude and devotes space to large underground laboratories such as that under the Gran Sasso in the Central Apennines, and the big experiments at high altitudes currently underway in Chile and Argentina. This is the Italian language edition.