Unbeknownst to many, our modern language contains countless words that were inspired by human observations of the cosmos. We now use words like “zenith”, “Monday”, “disaster”, “dog days”, “starfish”, “lunatic”, flu, and so many others, without a second thought for their celestial roots.
Famous French astrophysicist Daniel Kunth invites you on a linguistic and scientific journey through space and time to explore these forgotten origins. You will be astonished to rediscover cosmic language hidden in plain sight through this wonderful collection of historical and cultural stories, famous idioms and delightful puns, along with the real science behind each one. Elena Terlevich is a well known professional astronomer working at INAOE in Mexico, an honorary Professor at La Plata University in Argentina and a regular visitor at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge (UK).
Requiring no prior knowledge in astronomy or linguistics, this book’s universal contentsinvite the reader to ponder how our observations of the night sky have shaped our modern tongue and customs.
Daniel Kunth 77, is an astrophysicist emeritus from the CNRS. Specialist in the studies of dwarf galaxies, star formation, the search for distant galaxies, quasars (black holes), supernovae (implosion of a star and cosmology at the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris (IAP).
As part of his profession, he traveled extensively to Chile, Europe for his observational projects joining the ESO (European Southern Observatory) observatories and making extensive use of the Hubble Space Telescope.
All his life, Daniel Kunth considered that knowledge is only valuable if widely shared with the general public as it enlightens people in their role as citizens facing the world and the universe. This sharing of scientific knowledge was therefore expressed through writing books. In 1991 he has been at the initiative of the perennial national event "La Nuit des Etoiles" (Night of the stars).
Daniel Kunth has also contributed to the writing of collective works and 200 publications in scientific journals. He regularly publishes articles in mainstream magazines and gives radio interviews.
Elena Terlevich was born in Argentina, graduated in Astronomy at La Plata Observatory, and obtained a PhD in Astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy (University of Cambridge UK) where she is now retired (although she works as a part time Professor at INAOE, Puebla, Mexico). Research interests are the physical conditions in extragalactic giant regions of star formation and observational Cosmology.
