Starborn

September 15, 2023
Looking for an original focus among the many books describing the universe, a theoretical physicist looks to the stars. "Stars and planets spurred the invention of mathematics; the Moon, that of the calendar," writes Trotta, author of The Edge of the Sky. "And could it be that paying attention to the heavens was the secret weapon that gave Homo sapiens supremacy over the Neanderthals fifty thousand years ago?" For millennia, the movements of the constellations, the five "wandering stars" (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), the Moon, the Sun, and occasional comets and meteors have held deep significance. They have governed clocks, calendars, seasons, planting, harvests, and holidays and have been the basis of myth and religion. While minor gods inhabited forests and caves, the big ones lived in the sky. All cultures have wondered at the stars. Trotta passes quickly over the big bang and follows no strict chronology, but he pauses regularly to recount events in a fictional culture on a planet where clouds permanently hide the sky. The result is a scattershot collection of chapters describing milestones in the study of stars, from the origin of calendars lost in prehistory to the mysteries of dark energy in this century. Astronomy buffs will find few pearls, but most readers will enjoy expert accounts of clocks throughout history; Newton's spectacular work; the history of navigation (still entirely dependent on the stars); telescopes, from Galileo's in 1611 to last year's James Webb; the dazzling 19th-century discoveries of the enormous quantities and distances of stars; the dawn of computers; and the amazing appeal of astrology. In a grim conclusion, Trotta warns that the stars have long since disappeared from our light-poisoned cities and are imperiled everywhere, as we fill the air with pollution and Earth's vicinity with space junk, spending billions on sending humans into orbit while billions suffer on Earth. A largely satisfying miscellany about stars.

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September 25, 2023
Trotta (The Edge of the Sky), a physics professor at the International School for Advanced Study in Italy, offers a stellar survey of the “remarkable but often unrecognized” role played by stars and other cosmic bodies in human history. Covering the sky’s importance to timekeeping and navigation, Trotta notes that Egyptians as far back as the 13th century BCE divided the day into 12 hours on primitive sundials and that Polynesian mariners followed the stars to explore and settle “almost all habitable Pacific islands” between 2000 BCE and 1100 CE. Astronomy served as “the midwife to all Earth’s sciences,” Trotta contends, discussing how Galileo’s and Nicolaus Copernicus’s studies of the night sky contributed to the development of a scientific method “focused on regularities, measurement, and prediction.” The prose is evocative (“The artifacts and scant remains that do exist... cannot tell us of a hand raised to shield one’s eyes against the glare of the setting Sun, looking for the first slice of the crescent Moon”), and the history fascinates, even if the earliest material is largely reliant on speculation (Trotta suggests women may have kept the first lunar calendars to track their fertility and menstrual cycles). Still, it’s a stimulating take on how the heavens have shaped life on Earth.

November 17, 2023

What does society owe the stars? Trotta (astrophysics, Imperial Coll., London; The Edge of the Sky) asks this question as he charts human connection with the night sky. He says that first, the heavens stood in as an explanation for natural phenomena, as the home of gods in cultures all over the globe. Later, throughout human history, the stars played a vital role in timekeeping and navigation. Astronomy was the first science, as observation led to mathematics and a scientific method; a growing understanding and measuring of the universe led to technologies that underpin institutions and societies. Meanwhile, for individuals, astrology shows people how to see the stars in themselves. Trotta weaves in thought experiments between historical chapters; he describes an alternate world, Caligo, and imagines how different human history might be if people lived under a perpetually cloudy sky and were not guided by the stars. VERDICT This mesmerizing history of stargazing looks both back into the past and forward. An excellent recommendation for thoughtful and curious readers.--Catherine Lantz

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