Starlight Manifesto

I’ve spent four years at university studying physics and mathematics, and still no one has explained to me why Newton’s laws work. Or why we all seem to accept that a particle in motion has kinetic energy given by $E=\frac{1}{2}m{v}^2$. But worst of all, nobody seems to care.

When I entered university, I expected it to be different from the high school that had frustrated me so deeply. I expected professors and classmates who were obsessed with the subjects we studied, who couldn’t live with gaps in their knowledge or things they didn’t understand. I expected a university that would be a cradle of knowledge, where the obsessed in each field would gather and bang their heads against the wall until they understood a little more than yesterday.

The reality is that while university initially dazzled me with its freedoms and how different subjects like Algebra or Calculus were from their high school counterparts, once this honeymoon period ended, I began to dread going to class. I stopped asking every question that crossed my mind because I was becoming a nuisance. I realized that university wasn’t that “cradle of knowledge” I sought, where people are driven by learning and that would help me understand the stars, the planets, and everything around us.

Instead, it was merely a continuation of high school—a bit more elitist. Like everywhere else, people didn’t want to overthink things; they wanted to pass the exam and go home. The truth is that most people learn out of obligation, not desire. Universities as they exist today (at least in Spain) are nothing more than a bureaucratic process, conceptually no different from getting your ID card. This made sense in the world we’ve lived in until now, where a university degree seemed necessary for employment and everyone was expected to study. Universities have prostituted themselves by awarding degrees to people with little or no desire to learn and an incredibly superficial knowledge of their field. Because what mattered wasn’t the romantic pursuit of knowledge, but printing papers so that someone could get hired at Telefónica or Santander.

The problem now is that everyone has degrees. We find ourselves in a situation where graduates—people with the highest education, who theoretically represent the intellectual vanguard of our times—not only don’t know why the sun shines or why prime numbers are important, but they’re telling you your groceries cost €12.80 at the supermarket.

Don’t misunderstand me—I recognize that in today’s world, access to education is greater than at any other point in history. We increasingly need technical professionals: more engineers to build applications, architects to construct buildings, and sociologists to research social phenomena. My issue isn’t with broader access to education, but with the lack of options for those who don’t just want a job or superficial knowledge—the lack of options for the “obsessed.”

In my opinion, universities have taken the coward’s path. Not only have they abandoned the foundations of knowledge—philosophy, the theoretical aspects you don’t need for hammering a nail—but they also don’t teach you how to hammer the nail. Instead, they make you memorize how people decades ago thought about hammering nails, force you to integrate difficult functions, and memorize step-by-step procedures for calculating how to hammer a spherical nail in a vacuum with a constant force $F=2N$ along the x-axis. All while ignoring the internet and any advancement beyond calculators.

They teach neither the theoretical nor the practical. Universities aren’t cradles of knowledge, nor are they professional factories. They’re simply windows where, if you don’t give up first, they hand you a paper that allows you to pass the most basic screening—a Ctrl+F search on your resume—despite knowing nothing substantial. And that’s the problem. We need professionals and we need people obsessed with their subjects, but we don’t need thousands of hybrids who can integrate well, solve the 20 problems they’ve seen in their course, recite 500 pages from memory, or learn the tricks in the syllabus to get a 5 when they scored a 3 on the exam. Computers can already do all of this, or you can look it up online.

At this moment, when demand for education is at an all-time high, it makes no sense to have a single option for higher education—something like water that more or less everyone likes. We need to create a Pepsi, a Coca-Cola. We need different options for those obsessed individuals who want to understand and philosophize about why kinetic energy is $E=\frac{1}{2}m{v}^2$, and also options for those who don’t care about the why and just want to build the next car, face worlds with friction, and hammer real nails.

And exactly this is Starlight Theory

The believe that true understanding doesn’t come from memorizing formulas or regurgitating theorems. It comes from grasping the fundamental why behind every concept, from building knowledge from the ground up like constructing a cathedral, stone by stone. Too often, physics and mathematics are taught as if they were ancient scriptures to be memorized rather than living languages to be spoken. We’re handed equations wrapped in jargon, delivered with an air of mysticism that suggests these truths are beyond mortal comprehension. But this is a lie—a convenient fiction that keeps knowledge locked away behind walls of artificial complexity. The truth is simpler and more beautiful: Everything can be understood. Not just memorized, not just computed, but truly, deeply understood. The motion of planets, the behavior of light, the strange dance of quantum particles—all of these emerge from simple principles that, when explained clearly, make perfect sense to anyone willing to think.

Starlight, is to reject the notion that physics and mathematics must be difficult. To reject the academic gatekeeping that wraps simple ideas in complex language. To reject the culture that celebrates confusion over clarity.

Instead, we want to embrace a radical idea: that the deepest truths of our universe can be explained in plain language, with clear intuition, starting from first principles. And believe that when you truly understand something, you can explain it to a child. And if you can’t, then you don’t really understand it yourself.

This is what Starlight should aim for: to show that $E=\frac{1}{2}m{v}^2$ isn’t just a formula to memorize, but a beautiful consequence of deeper truths about space, time, and motion.

Here, we will try to build understanding from the ground up. No prerequisites except curiosity. No jargon except when absolutely necessary, and even then, explained clearly. No artificial barriers to comprehension.

Because in the end, the universe doesn’t hide its secrets—we do. We bury them under layers of tradition, formalism, and academic pretense.

And Starlight is that crazy idea, that believe that things are easier of what we make them see, that the world can be understood.