Starless World

What It Covers

Cosmologist Roberto Trotta explores how observing stars shaped human civilization, from prehistoric lunar calendars to modern science, and imagines how different our world would be without access to the night sky.

Key Questions Answered

• •Prehistoric astronomy origins: A 17,000-year-old baboon bone carved with 29 notches likely represents the first lunar calendar, tracking the moon's 29.5-day cycle, suggesting women were humanity's first astronomers and mathematicians through observing menstrual-lunar connections.
• •Birth of scientific method: Astronomy midwifed modern science by providing the first domain where quantitative measurements of regular phenomena enabled hypothesis testing. Tycho Brahe's precise planetary observations forced theories to match observational accuracy, establishing experimental verification as fundamental.
• •Distance measurement breakthrough: The 1769 James Cook expedition to Tahiti measured Venus transiting the sun from multiple Earth locations, calculating the Earth-Sun distance at 150 million kilometers. This stepping stone enabled Newton to estimate Sirius sits one million times farther than our sun.
• •Cepheid variable discovery: Henrietta Swan Leavitt's law in the 1900s identified stars whose flashing frequency reveals intrinsic brightness. Using inverse square law calculations, Edwin Hubble measured these variables to prove galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way and the universe expands continuously.