{"id":626548,"date":"2026-09-16T15:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T15:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/626548\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T15:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T15:34:13","slug":"lost-in-space-celebrity-astrophysicist-neil-degrasse-tyson-on-his-lavish-new-encyclopedia-of-the-cosmos-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/626548\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Lost in Space’: Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on his lavish new encyclopedia of the cosmos (interview)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Superstar astrophysicist, bestselling author, podcaster and ravenous consumer of pop culture Neil deGrasse Tyson<\/a> has never been shy when it comes to sharing his candid thoughts<\/a>, esoteric humor and vast depth of knowledge with the entire world.<\/p>\n

His latest book, “Lost in Space: 5,000 Facts For Navigating The Universe<\/a>,” is a spectacular 400-page whirlwind odyssey around the heavens that’s wonderfully composed using hundreds of colorful illustrations, charts, maps, galactic images, planetary profiles, astronomical wonders and historical photos that will keep curious readers engaged for a millennium or more.<\/p>\n

Released on Sept. 15, 2026 from National Geographic and written by Tyson and StarTalk colleague Lindsey Nyx Walker, “Lost in Space” is an encyclopedic space glossary and guidebook that includes information on everything from telescopes to UFOs<\/a> to exoplanets<\/a>. Think of it as a colorful, eye-catching candy store of cosmic proportions.<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: National Geographic)<\/p>\n

“First you\u2019ll notice how beautiful it is,” Tyson told Space.com. “That\u2019s National Geographic, and this is the fourth collaboration between them and our podcast. They made it into a beautiful object that, even if you didn’t read it, you just want to look at it. From the cover to the layout and the pages and images, it’s sheer beauty. It’s a coffee table book, but it’s also a really fun read. The idea was that there’s so much interesting information in the universe<\/a> that it’s not just metrically interesting, it’s analogically interesting.<\/p>\n

“Like in our podcast, where we merge science, pop culture and humor when you can. The facts of this book were constructed to rise up above the base value of a fact and turn it into something that\u2019s memorable to you as a reader \u2014 which means you can open to any page and pick out any fact and find something you might have never thought about. The entire universe. It’s got each planet, the night sky, moons, and a section on the Periodic Table of Elements. I\u2019m proud of it.”<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: National Geographic)<\/p>\n

Longtime producer and science journalist Lindsey Nyx Walker, the book’s co-author and Tyson’s StarTalk co-host, helped him come up with the lion\u2019s share of the fascinating facts and factoids, with a small writing team flushing out the last 2,000 or so details.<\/p>\n

“It’s all in the spirit of, ‘Is it an interesting or tasty fact, and does it make you smile?'” Tyson said. “Because then you’ll come back for more. And ideally, does it tap into something that you cared about walking into the room? So there’s a lot of referencing to movies. What would happen if The Hulk went from human size to The Hulk size? If you didn\u2019t add matter to him, he\u2019d have the density of a beach ball and a gust of wind would bounce him down the street. He must somehow gain mass, and they don\u2019t really address that. When we’re talking about mass and density, there are ways you can reach pop culture and have that highlight other ways you might be thinking about that very same subject. I was a geeky kid, and if I saw this book on a table I’d never put it down.”<\/p>\n

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A dynamic page from “Lost in Space: 5,000 Facts For Navigating The Universe.” (Image credit: National Geographic)<\/p>\n

“Lost In Space” is coming out just two weeks after a big astronomy event \u2014 the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope<\/a> on Aug. 30, 2026. Tyson offered up his thoughts and enthusiasms on this remarkable investigatory tool.<\/p>\n

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“I’m privileged to be a participant in a field where the simple launch of a telescope makes headlines,” he said. “We\u2019re not making science for another six months. What a joy it is to have the public celebrate our technological steps along with us. And I just think that\u2019s a beautiful fact. It\u2019s the next step in trying to understand dark matter<\/a>, dark energy,<\/a> and exoplanets \u2014 very different things from each other. But the telescope has different detectors that can rotate in and out of the focal plane so it can serve multiple sub-communities within the world\u2019s astrophysicists. We\u2019re all looking forward to this.”<\/p>\n

“Lost in Space: 5,000 Facts For Navigating The Universe” is available now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Superstar astrophysicist, bestselling author, podcaster and ravenous consumer of pop culture Neil deGrasse Tyson has never been shy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-626548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}