Asteroids: A History

by Curtis Peebles

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.

Genres: Science, Astronomy, Nonfiction

290 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2000

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/894197.html[return][return]This is a good book, but infuriatingly a bit thin on scholarship. There isn't a single reference to any article published in an academic history of science journal. I found this truly bizarre. More than half the references are to articles in Sky and Telescope, which is all very well, but has the academic community working on history of science completely ignored this topic? And perhaps a few references to the primary scientific literature might have been helpful?[return][return]Having said that, Peebles' heart is clearly in the right place. There's a whole chapter about the politics of street-lighting in San Diego, California, which is of marginal relevance to the history of asteroids but of great interest to those of us interested in the science/politics interface. There's a chapter on the naming of asteroids, which ends with the emphatic statement that "Mr Spock is a mythological figure." There's lots of interesting circumstantial detail on the personalities and life experiences of those who participated in the search for asteroids.[return][return]The scientific point I was left wondering about was the hardness of the boundaries between asteroids, comets and dwarf planets. The book was published before the recent downgrading of Pluto, but it's pretty clear that Pluto is in the same continuum of objects as Neptune's moon Triton they just happen to orbit different primaries and that at the other end of the scale various asteroids are pretty comet-like and vice versa, including the case of Comet Wilson-Harrington, now reclassified as asteroid 4015 Wilson-Harrington.

[Doc Kinne · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not well referenced, Asteroids: A History is a well done layman's account of its subject matter. It nicely recounts the first discoveries, how they were made, and what they meant at the time. It correctly depicts that our current situation with regard to Pluto is not new at all. The first four asteroids were originally counted as planets until it became obvious that they weren't.

The book, however, seems to take off toward the end as it describes both modern research, what it means for society, and how society has seen (or usually not seen) its value. Some of the stories can send chills down your spine.

"As [Eugene Shoemaker] drove to breakfast one morning [in 1948] he had a realization - humans would reach the Moon in his lifetime. Moreover, he would do what it took to be at the head of the line when that day arrived."

It was a stunning piece of prophecy!

With regard to beginning the possibility of defending ourselves against asteroid impacts - something that had only been accepted as possible in the early 60s spearheaded by the research of Dr. Shoemaker - the book notes that in the mid 1960s we "lacked a details analysis of the technological requirements and the physics of defending against the impact of a large asteroid. It was not until the close approach of 1566 Icarus in 1968 that this was done. The analysis was not a government study, however, but rather a student project."

The impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter is recounted in detail, as is the intellectual (and amazingly rather recent) intellectual journey that was made toward recognizing craters as impact events rather than artifacts of volcanic activity.

There is also a good and comprehensive chapter on the interesting subject of minor planet names - something that I've had something to do with very recently.

All in all, for someone interested in the subject matter, a recommended book.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 2 out of 5]

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