''Death from the Skies!: These Are The Ways The World Will End'' is a book by the American astronomer

Phil Plait Philip Cary Plait (born September 30, 1964), also known as The Bad Astronomer, is an American astronomer, skeptic, and popular science blogger. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objec ...

, also known as "the Bad Astronomer". The book was published in 2008 and explores the various ways in which the human race could be rendered

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

by astronomical phenomena.

Background

The author stated during an interview that one of the reasons for writing the book was that "the Universe is incredibly inhospitable, yet we have this planet that's doing OK by us. Another is that the Universe is incredibly cool and interesting.

Black holes A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can def ...

are really fun to think about. Actually, most of this is mind-stretching and fun. What happens to the Sun after 100 quadrillion years? One hundred

octillion Two naming scales for large numbers have been used in English and other European languages since the early modern era: the long and short scales. Most English variants use the short scale today, but the long scale remains dominant in many non-Eng ...

? A

googol A googol is the large number 10100. In decimal notation, it is written as the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeroes: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, ...

?" He also said that the reason for using

doomsday scenarios A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying Modernity, modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction o ...

was to take a scientific viewpoint, make it like a roller coaster or horror movie to make it fun and exciting. The stories were not to scare people out of their pants but make it cool to read about it.

Some of the subjects discussed in the book

Reviews

The book has had positive reviews from Todd Dailey of ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

'' Magazine, Nancy Atkinson of ''

Universe Today Universe Today (U.T.) is a popular North American-based non-commercial space and astronomy news website. The domain was registered on December 30, 1998, and the website went live in March 1999, founded by Canadian Fraser Cain. The ''Universe Today ...

'', and

Rebecca Watson Rebecca Watson is an American blogger and podcast host. She is the founder of the blog ''Skepchick'' and former co-host of ''The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe'' podcast. She also previously co-hosted the ''Little Atoms'' podcast. Career Wat ...

from Skepchick. It was also reviewed for '' Smithsonian'' magazine by Sarah Zielinski.

Appearances in other media

In 2010 the Discovery Channel had a documentary called ''Phil Plait's Bad Universe''. The show was based on a few chapters of the book.

George Hrab George Joseph Hrab is a drummer, guitarist, composer and podcaster known for performing rock, funk and jazz and for exploring atheist, skeptic and science themes in his work. He has released six albums as a solo artist. Hrab was born in Bell ...

and Phil Plait recorded a song called "Death from the Skies" with lyrics based on some of the events covered in the book.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Press interviews

Astronomy Cast Podcast Interview

TalkingHeadTV interview

Other

Bad Astronomy, Plait's blog as of February 2017 (Syfy.com)

Astronomy books Cosmic doomsday Popular science books 2008 non-fiction books Works about skepticism