The Quest for Comets: An Explosive Trail of Beauty and Danger - Softcover

The brilliant trailing beauty of fiery comets has inspired fear, wonder, and awe since the dawn of human history. Brighter than stars, moving and disappearing in their own singular orbits, comets have been among the most mysterious elements in the sky, eluding our understanding until very recently. With the aid of space probes, scientists have discovered that these swiftly moving chunks of ice and carbon are more plentiful and far more dangerous than suspected. Scientists are also beginning to realize the monumental role played by comets in the development of the Earth and solar system. David Levy describes in dramatic detail the thrilling yet often devastating effects of comet collisions. In the dawn of our solar system, the Earth was barraged with comets that may have carried the materials necessary to lay the foundations for life on this planet. Levy also presents compelling evidence for later comet collisions, including those of the age of dinosaurs. Great impacts, Levy asserts, not only caused the extinction of the dinesaurs, but ushered in new species of life. As Levy so clearly explains, scientists are realizing that comet collisions are virtually inevitable. Levy reveals possible future collisions with the Earth and describes the terrible risks to life they would pose. He even shows how we might prepare to withstand the impact of large comets in the future.|David Levy--one of the world's foremost amateur astronomers--co-discovered the periodic comet Shoemaker-Levy 9... He describes in dramatic detail the thrilling yet often devastating effects of comet collisions.

Levy is a young astronomer's Michael Jordan: he discovers comets where professional astronomers have looked before and found nothing. His 20-odd discoveries are sufficient authority to support this general survey of current theory and comet history. The headliner comet is his 1988 discovery, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, a decaying body due to enter the atmosphere of Jupiter sometime in midsummer 1994. The putative result will be impact explosions on Jupiter, perhaps visible as a flash in earth's night sky. Certainly the "crash" of Shoemaker-Levy 9 will create a media frenzy, and Levy here attends to the Armaggeddon questions this event will raise in popular science headlines, in layperson's language, including the comet catastrophe theories. He has created a highly readable version of a planetarium comet program, with comet watchers' astronomy tips thrown in at the end. Levy is entitled to tell the story of Shoemaker-Levy 9, if not the larger role of comet astrophysics, and in any case his successes as an amateur will launch a thousand younger readers' careers in astronomy. Photos. First serial to Science magazine; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.