Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean
An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System
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- $31.99
Publisher Description
The untold story of how environmental change throughout the cosmos shaped five hundred years of human civilization.
Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our fragile blue planet: Earth.
In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean, Dagomar Degroot traces the surprising threads linking human endeavor to the rest of the solar system. He reveals how variability in planetary environments has shaped geopolitics, spurred scientific and cultural innovation, and encouraged new ideas about the emergence and fate of life. Martian dust storms altered the trajectory of the Cold War and inspired fantastical stories about alien civilizations. Comet impacts on Jupiter led to the first planetary defense strategy. And volcanic eruptions spewed sulfuric acid into Venus’s atmosphere, exposing the existential risks of climate change at home.
As we stand on the brink of a new era of space settlement, cosmic environments are becoming increasingly vulnerable to human activity. They may also hold the key to slowing the destruction of environments on Earth. Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean urges us to develop an interplanetary environmentalism across a vast mosaic of entangled worlds and to consider the profound connections that bind us to the cosmos and each other.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Georgetown University environmental history professor Degroot (The Frigid Golden Age), offers a captivating examination of how humans' developing understanding of the solar system has shaped public affairs on Earth. Outer space, he explains, is an ever-changing arena; the sun spews plasma, and asteroids and comets zoom past planets, sometimes colliding at immense speeds. Changes in the cosmos have had wide-ranging effects here on Earth, Degroot argues. They've spurred new technology to study and perhaps communicate with other planets, influenced culture, shaped geopolitics, and awakened humanity to existential threats. Changes in Venus's atmosphere, for example, led scientists to investigate whether climate change and ozone depletion were happening on Earth, while dust storms on Mars prompted studies concluding that nuclear war on Earth would be detrimental to the planet. The resulting publicity campaigns reduced nuclear tensions during the Cold War. Now, Degroot notes that humans are increasingly making their own "ripples" in the cosmos, as the current space race presents the possibility of settling elsewhere in the solar system or exploiting other planets' resources. Adroitly integrating science and history, Degroot effectively demonstrates that Earth is entangled in a dynamic "cosmic mosaic." This accessible and eloquent volume both entertains and educates. Photos.
