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For over 400 years, physicists have been taking stock of nature - a triumphal procession. In our search for the stable building blocks of matter and the objects in the cosmos, we now seem to have arrived at the edge of recognizable reality: Higgs particles and gravitational waves from merging black holes, the radiation relics of the cosmic background radiation and extremely strange states of matter close to the unattainable absolute zero - everything is there and has been researched. But the world not only exists, it has also come into being, developed and been born. Where does this creativity in nature come from, this tendency to keep trying new things? In our search for stable islands, we have lost sight of the sea of instability - a tragedy. Harald Lesch studied physics in Giessen and Bonn, where he earned his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. After further stints in Heidelberg and Toronto, Harald Lesch was appointed Professor of Astrophysics at the Chair of Astronomy and Astrophysics - Observational and Experimental Astronomy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1995. His main research areas are cosmic plasma physics, black holes and neutron stars. Prof. Dr. Harald Lesch's lecture begins at minute 8:40. The MITP was founded in November 2012 as part of the PRISMA Cluster of Excellence and offers physicists from all over the world the opportunity to work together temporarily in Mainz and to conduct interdisciplinary research. Further information on the MITP can be found at http://www.mitp.uni-mainz.de/