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Brought to you by Penguin.

How The Solar System Shaped Human History – And May Help Save Our Planet

Our solar system is an extraordinary place 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 own fragile blue planet.

In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean, Dagomar Degroot traces the surprising threads linking humanity to the rest of the solar system. He reveals how the shifting sands of other planets have 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 civilisations. Comet impacts on Jupiter led to the first planetary defence strategy. And volcanic eruptions spewed sulfuric acid into Venus’s atmosphere, exposing the existential risks of global warming.

But just as we expand the boundaries of space exploration, cosmic environments are becoming increasingly vulnerable to human activity. Yet, they may also hold the key to slowing down the climate crisis back 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.

'A stunning history of how we've come to understand environmental change on Earth...A rich, eye-opening tapestry, and beautifully told!' LEWIS DARTNELL

'Masterfully shows that our understanding of some of the world's greatest threats has come from watching the stars' LUKE KEMP

'This dazzling book is an enormous contribution, challenging us to re-envision the universe and our place in it' SARAH STEWART JOHNSON

'Boldly taken environmental history where no historian has gone before...The book brims over with both interesting anecdotes and arresting perspectives on our place within the cosmos' J.R. McNEILL

© Dagomar Degroot 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critics Review

A stunning history of how we've come to understand environmental change on Earth and on other worlds in our solar system. But Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean also offers so much more than that. Degroot masterfully illustrates how science progresses - its past misapprehensions and failures as much as its triumphs of elucidation - and how our growing knowledge of the cosmos has shaped human affairs. A rich, eye-opening tapestry, and beautifully told!
Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins
A cosmic panorama of how the solar system has molded our past and may spell our end. From comets hitting Jupiter to vast explosions on the Sun, Dagomar Degroot masterfully shows that our understanding of some of the world's greatest threats has come from watching the stars
Luke Kemp, author of Goliath's Curse
This dazzling book is an enormous contribution, challenging us to re-envision the universe and our place in it. With exquisite insight, Dagomar Degroot reveals how our environment is much more expansive than our own planet, and indeed ripples out into the cosmos
Sarah Stewart Johnson, author of The Sirens of Mars
Dagomar Degroot has boldly taken environmental history where no historian has gone before. In this beautifully written and handsomely illustrated book, Degroot shows how dynamic components of the solar system have affected both earthly environments and human ideas over the last five centuries. Part history of astronomy and astronomers, part super-macro environmental history, the book brims over with both interesting anecdotes and arresting perspectives on our place within the cosmos
J. R. McNeill, author of The Webs of Humankind
Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean brings us a new arena of history, the history of our collective engagement with our planetary neighbors in the inner solar system. Dagomar Degroot has constructed an amazing synthesis of how cultural projections, and gradually the observational sciences, have brought the environmental histories of the Sun, the Moon, Venus, Mars, and the asteroids into sharper and sharper focus. Simultaneously, Degroot shows how our explorations of environments in the inner solar system have illuminated the critical features of our home planet Earth. This is a book that will be widely read as we grapple both with our emerging efforts to inhabit near-earth environments and with the pressing problem of planetary sustainability here on Earth.
John L. Brooke, author of Climate Change and the Course of Global History
A beautifully illustrated and flowing account of the place of our world in the vastness of the cosmos. Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean offers a stark warning about the interplanetary hazards our world faces, but it also offers hope: about our potential to explore the cosmic high seas and our potential to save our own little island. Degroot sets some awesome challenges, but he opens up some liberating possibilities
John Haldon, author of The Empire That Would Not Die

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