Joseph Caruana recently gave an illustrated talk ‘On Being Human: Perspectives From Astronomy’, at Il-Ħaġar museum in Victoria.
Caruana said we did not know when humanity first looked up at the night sky and wondered about it. The professor argued that we had come a long way since the first recorded observations of the heavens. Our knowledge of the universe had flourished in the intervening centuries and millennia.
Caruana said: “Through successive technological innovations we have been able to explore myriad other worlds, billions of stars, and remote galaxies – all from the comfort of planet Earth – our cradle in this vast cosmos.
“Gradually, we have assembled the story of our own origins, in the process painting a picture that is far richer and more beautiful than we ever imagined.”
Astronomy, he added, has challenged the conception of what it means to be human, displacing us in the grand scheme of things.
“It has thrown our smallness in stark relief against cosmic grandness,” he said.
“Nevertheless, we can ponder the universe’s own story, starting from its very beginning. Many fundamental questions still remain to be answered.
“Where are we in our quest and what kind of tools are helping us to glean answers? he asked.
After reading for a joint honours B.Sc. in physics and mathematics at the University of Malta, Caruana carried out his doctoral research at the Department of Physics of the University of Oxford, where he read for a DPhil in astrophysics as a Marie Curie research fellow in a network associated with the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope NIRSpec instrument.
At Christ Church, Oxford, he tutored General Relativity and Cosmology.
In 2012, Caruana moved to Berlin, taking up a postdoctoral research position in astrophysics at the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik in Potsdam, as a member of the Galaxies and Quasars group and the MUSE Consortium.
In 2016, he returned to the Department of Physics and the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy, where he lectures on optics, astrophysics and cosmology and the philosophy of science.
Caruana is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and member of both the European Astronomical Society and the International Astronomical Union.