A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history
For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today's artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos.
In Starborn, cosmologist Roberto Trotta reveals how stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The stars have served as our timekeepers, our navigators, our muses-they were once even our gods. How radically different would we be, Trotta also asks, if our ancestors had looked up to the night sky and seen… nothing? He pairs the history of our starstruck species with a dramatic alternate version, a world without stars where our understanding of science, art, and ourselves would have been radically altered.
Revealing the hidden connections between astronomy and civilization, Starborn summons us to the marvelous sight that awaits us on a dark, clear night-to lose ourselves in the immeasurable vastness above.
From the big bang to black holes, from dark matter to dark energy, from the origins of the universe to its ultimate destiny, The Edge of the Sky tells the story of the most important discoveries and mysteries in modern cosmology—with a twist. The book’s lexicon is limited to the thousand most common words in the English language, even excluding physics, energy, galaxy, and universe. Through the eyes of a fictional scientist (Student-People) hunting for dark matter with one of the biggest telescopes (Big-Seers) on Earth (Home-World), cosmologist Roberto Trotta explores the most important ideas about our universe (All-There-Is) in language simple enough for anyone to understand.
A unique blend of literary experimentation and science popularization, this delightful book is a perfect gift for any aspiring astronomer. The Edge of the Sky tells the story of the universe on a human scale, and the result is out of this world.
“In a style akin to magical realism, Roberto Trotta tells the story of the cosmos—an engaging and informative book.”—Arthur I. Miller, author of Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art
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