Rain Of Iron And Ice: The Very Real Threat Of Comet And Asteroid Bombardment

by John S. Lewis

Rain of Iron and Ice shows us the unmistakable evidence—from spaceprobe flybys of the planets to the scars on our own Earth—of cataclysmic comet and asteroid impacts. By comparing what we know about the earth's geology and paleontology with the ages of the other planets and moons in our solar system, Lewis makes the strongest case yet for sudden, dramatic extinctions and assesses the risks to planet Earth.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Astronomy, Space

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

John S. Lewis (born June 27, 1941) is a Professor Emeritus of planetary science at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. His interests in the chemistry and formation of the solar system and the economic development of space have made him a leading proponent of turning potentially hazardous near-Earth objects into attractive space resources.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit dated, published in 1996, but in a way that bolster's Dr. Lewis' credibility, as the new information the sciences have turned up in the intervening years have supported his statements.

Also, this book is only half the story, the negative side of the coin. For its counterpart, see the other book he published in 1996, Mining the Sky, about the possibilities in using the resources of our Moon, Mars, Mars' moons, and the asteroids to enable humanity to explore and settle the solar system and move polluting industries to space.

Rain of Iron and Ice, however, is about the history of the events its subtitle mentions: comet and asteroid strikes on Earth. The author examines the history via geological and, where possible, cultural evidence, and does quite a bit of calculating to find both the odds of strikes of various sizes and how much damage they do when they take place (for anything up to and past the size of the dinosaur-killing meteorite strike 65 million years ago, it's that old cliche, not if but when.) He examines what we can do and are doing to mitigate that danger by finding near-Earth objects and calculating whether or when they'll hit us, and looks at a variety of ways people have proposed to keep that from happening. All along, he occasionally injects bits of very dry humor to keep it from getting too heavy.

So even though this book was printed 15 years ago as I write this review, in a fast-developing scientific field, it's well worth reading. Again, my recommendation would be to read it along with his other book from the same year, Mining the Sky.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second book I've read on the subject, and my reading definitely benefited from even the modest experience offered by first book (Verschuur's "Impact!"). Both are 20 years out of date, though, so who knows what kind of progress has been made in the field since publication? It ain't me.

The Shoemaker-Levy comet impact on Jupiter seems to have inspired a rash of books about comet/asteroid impacts in the mid-90s. I'm still getting my sea legs, so I can't say whether these books are the product of good science sensing a PR opportunity, or less-credible alarmism.

Anyway, this book has a ton of really great historical accounts of impacts. Verschuur's book spent a lot of time preoccupied with the institutional drama around academic impact research (who fucked whom over for credit/grant money/establishment credibility). This book has none of that, and instead spends a lot of time tabulating ancient Chinese impact death tolls, mixed with eyewitness accounts and narratives of computer simulations and hypothetical impacts. Much better.

Also, there's a bit where the author describes evolutionary catastrophism in terms of classical music. The dude seems super into "Madama Butterfly."

[Kristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Planetary science and the study of the solar system are of high personal and professional interest to me, and I really looked forward to this book. The content is accurate and topical, but where chapters could have been made more digestible, the reader instead finds lists of figures to several decimal places, technical jargon, and a ticker tape parade of different asteroid, meteor, and meteorite events. It took me several weeks to finish the book, which is very rare for me for any book but particularly for an astronomy book.

[Bayard West · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rain of Fire and Ice is a factual account of threats to our civilization from asteroids and comets. It is gripping in it's account of past events and a compelling exploration of what would happen if a massive object were to strike our planet.

Whenever I want to write about true disaster, I find myself opening this book and flipping to the chapter called Brighter than a Thousand Suns which relates the events of December 6th, 1917 when a French cargo ship caught fire in the Halifax harbor, Nova Scotia. The Mont Blank was laden with 2,300 tons of picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 35 tons of benzole and 10 tons of guncotten. The explosion accelerated broken window shards to near the speed of sound and fired them into buildings, blasted a thousand tons of the ship into the air, dredged and then hurled boulders from the harbor bottom, lifted ships onto the shore, rang church bells 60 miles away, formed a mushroom cloud and killed almost 2000 people. All this was from a manmade explosion that could be equaled by a moderately sized object from our solar system intersecting with Earth's orbit.

Even more engrossing are the accounts of explosive encounters from ancient to modern times, from Constantinople in A.D. 472 to Tunguska, Russia.

The book was published some time ago in 1996, but I have not seen it's equal since.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. Great stories of historically documented terrestrial impacts. Well researched great read for those with an interest in meteorite, comet, or asteroid impact related matters.