The End of Astronauts

Donald Goldsmith has written more than a dozen books, including Exoplanets, The Runaway Universe, The Hunt for Life on Mars, Supernova, and, with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Origins. He has received lifetime achievement awards for astronomy education from the American Astronomical Society and for the popularization of astronomy from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal, was previously Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. A past president of the Royal Society, he has won numerous awards, including the Templeton Prize and the inaugural Fritz Zwicky Prize. The author of ten books and more than 500 research papers, he cofounded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.