The failure at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is one of the most dramatic and tragic pages of the 20th century. This catastrophe is a symbol of the destructiveness of human delusions and the arrogant selfish worldview. Man allowed himself to think that he made nature work for himself, but nature has shown its true indomitable character. This incident also showed the depravity of the socialist authorities, which for a long time tried to hide the real scale of the disaster and the threat of radioactive contamination. This last drop became fatal for the majestic colossus on the clay feet called the USSR, which rapidly began to fall apart before everyone’s eyes. The whole world has learned a difficult lesson, which further led to a slowdown in the construction of new nuclear power plants and forced many developing countries to opt for environmental green technologies. From a social point of view, humanity has begun to rely more on international institutions that carefully monitor the situation around the world to try to avoid similar events. But as we know, this has already been repeated again... However, we should not despair, but it’s worth any experience, first of all negative, to adopt into service. This is the hard way on the stairs of progress.

The Universe is calling, brave rangers of the Soviet Space! You are going to be the first to conquer the space, and to say for sure, this event responds with pride in your hearts! This most important task will require maximum dedication, conscientious work and an inquiring mind – we have high expectations on you, all of humanity is looking at you! Researchers, scientists and experimenters: you seek to know the boundless abode of the sky – honor and praise to you! Combine your aspirations, so that together and harmoniously – with one united team – to break into the boundless starry ocean! The whole world will be in front of you, and you can check all the most daring assumptions about how it looks from the side, and see how beautiful our planet is in reality! The results of all your observations and impressions of the flight will be documented in detail by the on–board computer, and on Earth processed and transformed into musical pieces that will allow all of humanity to touch this magnificent achievement!

What feelings does autumn open? It appears they are mixed: first come the sadness and the rainy weather, and then the golden time and the quiet rustle of fallen leaves follow. To feel deeply this special season is to breathe the good memories of warm sunny days with a light longing in the soul. Listen to the golden tones: what are they whispering? Probably that everything has a beginning and an end, and autumn ends the cycle with a final chord before the winter interval. The motley colors of the trees are like ritual garments at the World’s ceremony that celebrates its death, preparing for a new birth. We are her silent pastors that obey the holy order of mother nature. We keep her melancholy in ourselves that saves us from the torments of the heart every time, and gives the hope for life.

This saga is about a very young, prehistoric solar system. We explore it to understand what the planets are like now and how they originated. But between these periods there was a completely mysterious time... What were our planets in the first two or three billion years? These were different paths of life, full of grandiose changes that led each planet to its present form. In the second part, we will discover the secret of the Phaeton died in the gravitational grip... We will fly further and see that the grandiose Jupiter was too small to light up and become a star... Let’s watch the dance of the Saturnian cloud that formed the rings. We will visit Uranus before it falls into a dream and lies down with its axis of rotation into the plane of its orbit. And let’s see how Neptune was originally located closer to the Sun than Uranus. And who knows, maybe our journey will continue...

When we unite efforts, we can create anything that our imagination wishes. Structures such as a huge skyscraper, a power plant or a steel mill can be created only by means of hundreds and thousands of workers who must invest their experience and work in the project, and then pinch off a little soul and pass it to their creation. And then the man-made giants come to life, launching their mechanisms and life support systems, and in their depths they create unprecedented household items, heavy machinery and weapons, electricity, or even disembodied big data. But the epoch of giants is finite... Technical and moral obsolescence of the infrastructure makes itself felt, and people leave the giants. Then they stand alone – eerie and covered with dust of ages, angry at the cruel humanity that gave them life, and then ruthlessly took away its meaning. And only the wind walks through the slits of the frames, the cracks of the glass and the empty eye sockets of the windows. And the giants fearlessly await for the ships of time and stand as monuments of the past generations.

This saga is about a very young, prehistoric solar system. We explore it to understand what the planets are like now and how they originated. But between these periods there was a completely mysterious time... What were our planets in the first two or three billion years? These were different paths of life, full of grandiose changes that led each planet to its present form. In the first part we will be on the terrestrial planets, and we will begin with the primordial cradle from which they are born. Mercury could once have been a satellite of Venus, but collisions with other objects and the strong field of the Sun pushed it away from its orbit and sent to a lonely voyage for searching a stable orbit in the hot embraces of the native star. The ever-rainy Venus will plunge us into deceptively calm dreams – after all, it is waiting for the accumulation of greenhouse gases, and the surface will forever become inaccessible for life... We will be on Earth long before its prehistoric period, when volcanoes were boiling everywhere, asteroids were falling, we would hear the sound of protoplasm in the primordial soup. And the deserted Mars will tell us about the most ancient civilization, whose unmerciful attitude to the ecology of the planet led to the catastrophe... For a long time, science will figure out what the planets were like in their youth. But what we already know is worthy of fantastic stories.

A man broke into space and reached the Moon, while his automated spacecraft are exploring other planets of the solar system or have already left its limits. At the same time, regions almost inaccessible to research remain on Earth, one of which is the mesosphere. It is impossible to fly to it by plane or aerostat, research probes do not reach it, because the air at this altitude is too thin for their flight and at the same time too dense for the long-term presence there of instruments, launched on a ballistic trajectory. We know very little about this atmospheric layer, mainly by circumstantial evidence of its impact on radio signals, launched spacecraft and meteorological rockets, as well as on the behavior of the mysterious silver clouds which occur only there. It is assumed that there are kilometer-long waves and powerful vortex flows at these altitudes, as a result of which their unique silhouette is formed, resembling a cosmic nebulae. And at this moment, we, having reached the planets and their satellites, passionately trying to find the edge of the Universe, are standing, glaring at this fascinating spectacle unable to break away, and remembering that we still don’t know all the secrets of our home planet, or rather, we don’t know a damn much... But we will definitely get to know!

Wonder, how much time is spent in the road? In a global sense – highway, rustle of tires, water splashes from under the wheels, or snow... The road as part of life, the inner state of each. Whether it is a road to job or back, in any weather, when time goes in parallel, and summer gives way to autumn, then winter – so year after year. The road as a path for jogging in the early morning. The road as an evening walk arm in arm with a beloved, a quiet conversation about everything and nothing, or simply go along and silent. No need for words when feel the pulse under fingers, thus happy only because she is near. There are self, she and the Universe...

Life may appear quite predictable and predetermined, if you do not translate it into variable values. And then it will be an inexhaustible source of high-profile events, useful knowledge, fateful meetings, incredible adventures, unexpected turns and important lessons.

Imagine yourself an entity of light... You are born in the radiant worlds and get into the place most attractive for you – the realm of glass, crystal and mirrors... The real game of optical illusions begins. Refraction, bundle into many colors and scattering on thin and sharp edges. You are so fascinated... You turn into myriads of self copies, shine and spray in all directions with sunbeams. Looking at your own reflections, you find strange memories in the depths of your bright memory: you flew for a long time across the boundless space, skirted the galaxies and played a ghost penumbra under the tree crowns on the unknown planets. Or it was not you, but your brothers bearing the light, with whom you are inseparable, like the light is inseparable and complete in the Universe... Or maybe it all just seemed to you in this strange world – in a world of specular loomings...