INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna
In this paper I describe the scientific content of Eureka, the prose poem written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1848. In that work, starting from metaphysical assumptions, Poe claims that the Universe is finite in an infinite Space, and that it originated from a primordial Particle, whose fragmentation under the action of a repulsive force caused a diffusion of atoms in space.