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Title details for Asteroids by Curtis Peebles - Available

Asteroids

by Curtis Peebles
ebook
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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. 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. Today, researchers have named and identified the mineral composition of these objects. 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.
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. 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. 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.
Showing how asteroid research is increasingly collaborative, the book provides insights into the evolution of scientific ideas and the ebb and flow of scientific debate.
Expand title description text
Publisher: Smithsonian

Kindle Book

  • Release date: April 26, 2016

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781944466046
  • File size: 3349 KB
  • Release date: April 26, 2016

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781944466046
  • File size: 3349 KB
  • Release date: April 26, 2016

Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

History Science Nonfiction

Languages

English

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. 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. Today, researchers have named and identified the mineral composition of these objects. 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.
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. 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. 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.
Showing how asteroid research is increasingly collaborative, the book provides insights into the evolution of scientific ideas and the ebb and flow of scientific debate.
Expand title description text
History Science Nonfiction
  • Details

    Publisher:
    Smithsonian

    Kindle Book
    Release date: April 26, 2016

    OverDrive Read
    ISBN: 9781944466046
    File size: 3349 KB
    Release date: April 26, 2016

    EPUB ebook
    ISBN: 9781944466046
    File size: 3349 KB
    Release date: April 26, 2016

  • Creators
  • Formats
    Kindle Book
    OverDrive Read
    EPUB ebook
  • Languages
    English