Patrizia Caraveo is Director of Research at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. Her lifelong passion is the sky, and especially the stars, as they have shaped our history and culture, holding the key to our technological future.

Just think of the GPS on your smartphone.

Thanks to the satellites orbiting high above our heads, we can find any location in the world and pinpoint our exact position to within a metre.

Relativity-based calculations also allow satellite signals to empower the global economy by time-stamping financial transactions with supreme accuracy.

As Patrizia says, “the stars are always with us”, so our flawless technology has ancient roots.