The Science Factory
London Book Fair 2020
NEW DEALS
A WORLD WITHOUT STARS How the Night Sky Made Us Who We Are ROBERTO TROTTA Praise for THE EDGE OF THE SKY A master storyteller – FOREIGN POLICY A poetic primer on the universe – BRAIN PICKINGS
An astrophysicist’s reappraisal of humanity’s history that takes readers on a wonder-filled journey to discover the human connection with our cosmic environment. Imagine looking up to the sky on a dark night and seeing... nothing. Imagine Earth permanently shrouded in clouds – a thick blanket of dark grey clouds, blotting out even the face of the Sun during the day and that of the full Moon at night. Imagine a star-starved civilization struggling to take hold with our ancestral connection to the sky severed. The night sky makes us feel small and insignificant, yet proud of our ability to marvel at it and to decrypt its mysteries. Beyond the stars, at the beginning of time, at the origin of the Universe, religion and science meet and collide. Amazingly, these indifferent pinpricks of light inspired the highest expressions of human creativity: beauty and meaning, courage and hope, sprung from remote balls of gas burning away in the coldness of space. We are stardust imbued with the longing to understand where we come from and to sing what we cannot comprehend. Thousands of years ago, the sky was a constant companion to our forebears. The rhythm of their lives revolved around the stars. Not so today: for most of us the night sky is largely lost in the glow of artificial lighting. We hardly bother to look at the sky any more, and when we do there is little for us to see. Even professional astronomers study the Universe by staring at screens rather than through eyepieces. We have lost our intimate relationship with the Universe. In A WORLD WITHOUT STARS, Roberto Trotta explores the surprisingly deep influence of astronomical phenomena in shaping the trajectory of human history. From mythology, religion, farming and the creative arts, to mathematics, astronomy, technology and pop culture, he reveals how the very fabric of who we are has been shaped by our ability to see the stars. What’s more, by daring us to imagine other worlds without stars – from lifeforms beneath the icy crust of distant moons, to the prospect of pure energy beings emerging in a dark, cold, empty Universe – he impresses on us just how special and important our own view of the cosmos is. After reading this book, you will never look at the night sky in the same way as before. For we are made by stars, in many more ways than we ever imagined. ROBERTO TROTTA is a professor of astro-statistics at Imperial College London, director of Imperial’s Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication and a visiting professor of cosmology at Gresham College, London. He has published more than 50 scientific papers, contributed to two books and received numerous awards for his research work and science communication activities. His first book for the public, THE EDGE OF THE SKY (Basic Books, 2014), explains the Universe using only the most common 1,000 words in English, and was widely acclaimed. He lives in London with his wife and their two young children. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Basic Books Delivery: October 2020 Publication: Autumn 2021 Status: Proposal Length: 90,000–100,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Basic Books), Italy (Il Saggiatore) 6
