From telescopes to accelerators

If Victor Hugo was correct, then astronomers are becoming ever more indiscreet as the size of their telescope mirrors continues to increase, to as much as several tens of meters in the case of certain current projects. Should they wish, however, to pursue their indiscretion along other avenues, the large-scale study of the universe is intimately linked with its comprehension on the atomic and subatomic scales. Have we not encountered, throughout the preceding chapters, the notion of particles, baryons, dark matter and dark energy, nuclear reactions... the very vocabulary of particle physics, leading us towards a better understanding of the object of our studies in cosmology- the universe in its totality?