Imagine how different our world would be if our ancestors had looked up and there were no stars . . . For tens of thousands of years, the stars were our constant companions. One of our species' most enduring and universal relationships has been with the night sky itself, yet in the glow of today's artificial lighting, we have forgotten this intimacy with the cosmos. Stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The rhythm of our ancestors' lives revolved around the stars, from cycles of agriculture to patterns of birth. Origin myths made the Sun into a life-giving creator and the Milky Way a gateway for departed souls. The motion of celestial bodies sustained the illusion that the Earth was at the centre of the cosmos - until looking at them more closely sparked the Scientific Revolution. Across the ages stars have served as clocks, maps, compasses, muses, and gods, defining our laws of reality and our dreams of the sublime. Leading cosmologist Roberto Trotta imagines a world without stars, a dramatic alternate history in which we wouldn't understand gravity, couldn't navigate or have much sense of time, and where our sense of the profound was altered beyond recognition. Starborn will change how you think of the night sky forever.

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, excluding "physics," "energy," "galaxy," or even "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.

Imagine how different our world would be if our ancestors had looked up and there were no stars . . . For tens of thousands of years, the stars were our constant companions. One of our species' most enduring and universal relationships has been with the night sky itself, yet in the glow of today's artificial lighting, we have forgotten this intimacy with the cosmos. Stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The rhythm of our ancestors' lives revolved around the stars, from cycles of agriculture to patterns of birth. Origin myths made the Sun into a life-giving creator and the Milky Way a gateway for departed souls. The motion of celestial bodies sustained the illusion that the Earth was at the centre of the cosmos - until looking at them more closely sparked the Scientific Revolution. Across the ages stars have served as clocks, maps, compasses, muses, and gods, defining our laws of reality and our dreams of the sublime. Leading cosmologist Roberto Trotta imagines a world without stars, a dramatic alternate history in which we wouldn't understand gravity, couldn't navigate or have much sense of time, and where our sense of the profound was altered beyond recognition. Starborn will change how you think of the night sky forever.

The first published work to explore the new philosophy of speculative realism through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and an openness to its outside. The first published work to explore the new philosophical field of speculative realism, the second volume of Collapse features a selection of speculative essays by some of the foremost young philosophers at work today, together with new work from artists and filmmakers, and searching interviews with leading scientists. Comprising subjects from probability theory to theology, from quantum theory to neuroscience, from astrophysics to necrology, it involves them in unforeseen and productive syntheses. Against the tide of institutional balkanisation and specialisation, this volume testifies to a defiant reanimation of the most radical philosophical problematics-the status of the scientific object, metaphysics and its "end," the prospects for a revival of speculative realism, the possibility of phenomenology, transcendence and the divine, the nature of causation, the necessity of contingency-both through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and through an openness to its outside. The breadth of philosophical thought in this volume is matched by the surprising and revealing thematic connections that emerge between the philosophers and scientists who have contributed.