The development of the Cosmos:
What is our place in the universe?

The origin, form, and structure of the universe, as well as the cosmic processes upon which they are based, pose questions which have fascinated human beings for millennia:. Astronomers and astrophysicists are researching cosmic structures and processes: The birth and death of stars, the development of galaxies, and the structure of ”dark matter”. They are posing questions about cosmic evolution, i.e. about the origin and development of structures from out of the chaos of the Big Bang. Today, new knowledge is arising from the interplay between astronomical observations and numerical simulations of cosmic structures and processes. The precondition for these new perspectives is the availability of increasingly more efficient and complex instruments: Telescopes on the earth and in space, which are equipped with special sensory apparatuses and cameras. They are the key to the study of our solar system and of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which contains stars in all their stages of development as well as interstellar medium; also research into galaxy clusters and the intergalactic medium; all the way to the large-scale structures of the universe, which we today picture as a kind of giant sponge or foam.