★Winner of the 17th Edition of the Premio letterario Galileo per la Divulgazione Scientifica(Galileo Literary Award for Science Popularization).
★Space colonies, a mix of fantasy and reality.
★A striking essay taking a new approach on an intriguing and very current topic: journeys, colonies and industrial settlements in Space.
★"Following A Ray of Light", which sold 10,000 copies in few months, marked Balbi’s growing success as a populariser.
★In the past year, Prof. Balbi’s educational YouTube channel has more than doubled its subscribers, reaching 220,000 and almost 100,000 views per video.

It’s the latest trend among the new powerful people of Earth: Elon Musk wants to take us around Space, Richard Branson to Mars, and Jeff Bezos is aiming to move us beyond the atmosphere, where heavy industry would become light with a lower impact on global equilibrium.

The prospect is intriguing, but how realistic is it?

Amedeo Balbi, with his skills as an astrophysist and talent as a populariser, tries to answer this question by unveiling what we can and can’t expect from the near future in order to understand whether conquering Space is a viable way to escape a polluted and overpopulated Earth or whether we have to roll up our sleeves to save our good old Planet.

Amedeo Balbi (Rome 1971) is associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Physics Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy. The author of over 100 scientific papers, his research has touched a broad set of topics, including the physics of the early universe, the problem of dark matter and energy, and the search for life in the cosmos. His studies contributed to the first precise measurements of the cosmological parameters and to the determination of the geometry of the universe. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union, of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi), of the IAA SETI Permanent Committee and of the Scientific Council of the Italian Society of Astrobiology. He is also very active as a science popularizer. A frequent guest of radio and TV programs, he writes a monthly column in the Italian edition of Scientific American, as well as articles and commentaries for a number of newspapers and magazines (among others, la Repubblica, la Stampa, il Post).