Asteroids: A History (Smithsonian History of Aviation & Spaceflight Series)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.44 (742 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1560983892 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 290 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-03-31 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
They range in size from 33 feet to 580 miles wide and most are found in a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. During the past two centuries, the quest for knowledge about asteroids has involved eminent scientists and amateur astronomers, patient research and sudden intuition, advanced technology and the simplest of telescopes, newspaper headlines and Cold War secrets. Asteroids suggest images of a catastrophic impact with Earth, triggering infernos, tidal waves, famine, and death -- but these scenarios have obscured the larger story of how asteroids have been discovered and studied. Peebles also chronicles the discovery of Shoemaker-Levy 9, a comet with twenty-two nuclei that crashed into Jupiter in 1994, releasing many times the energy of the world's nuclear arsenal. Covering all aspects of asteroid investigation, Curtis Peebles shows how ideas about the orbiting boulders have evolved. He describes how such phenomena as the Moon's craters and dinosaur extinction were gradually, and by some scientists grudgingly, accepted as the results of asteroid impacts. Today, researchers have named and identified the mineral composition of these objects. He tells how a band of icy asteroids rimming the solar system, first proposed as a theory in the 1940s, was ignored for more than forty years until renewed interest and technological breakthroughs confirmed the existence of the Kuiper Belt. Showing how asteroid research is increasingly collaborative, the book provides insig
Excellent book for those interested in the topic Once upon a time, asteroids were "the vermin of the skies," as Peebles indicates. However, with the success of the NEAR mission and with concerns over the cataclysmic effects of asteroid impacts making their way even into popular culture, they are of great interest today.The book lives up to the title, p. Worthwhile despite a quirky complaint An outstanding introductory and reference work on the current thinking behind the asteroid phenomenon, including the controversies over naming, geological studies etc. Covers in some depth the main periods of asteroid discovery, from visual to photographic to automated. Also deals briefly with issues of . Mario Porto (Autor) said A tribute to the asteroids and comets hunters. A very good book to anyone that desires to acquire a good glimmer about the subject of Near Earth Objects and their threat to our civilization.It covers all aspects from technical to politics and is a real tribute to many dedicated professionals and amateurs astronomers, geologist and others various scie
In this engaging volume, Curtis Peebles surveys the science of asteroids, offering a highly readable account of the many ways in which they form out of the flotsam and jetsam of larger celestial bodies, the dust and debris of space. Still others see in asteroids the likelihood of global destruction--after all, one of them, slamming into the earth millions of years ago, may very well have condemned the dinosaurs to extinction, and deep space harbors untold potential threats to the earth. He adds to this scientific overview an anecdotal history of asteroid discovery and detection, which, he writes, was often the work of gifted astronomers working with less than ideal e