Asteroid Hunters

by Carrie Nugent

Dr Carrie Nugent is an asteroid hunter - one of the select group of scientists working diligently to map our cosmic neighbourhood. For the first time ever we are reaching the point where we may be able to prevent a natural disaster resulting from an asteroid collision. Nugent will delve into the impact asteroids have had in the the extinction of the dinosaurs, the earth-sized hole Shoemaker-Levy 9 left in Jupiter just a few years ago, how the surprise hit on Chelyabinsk in Russia could have started a war and unlucky Ms Anne Hodges - the only person (that we know of) in modern history to be the victim of a direct hit.
    Nugent will also reveal the cutting-edge work that she is part of - using NASA's NEOWISE telescope to track down near-Earth asteroids. NEOWISE has seen over 158,000 asteroids and discovered over 30,000. We will also get a rare glimpse into the work of this band of asteroid hunters and their techniques. 
    Asteroid orbits are chaotic which means a small early change has a  big  impact later on. The successful hunt and mapping of asteroids could mean nothing less than saving life on Earth. 

 

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Space, Astronomy, Audiobook, Science Nature

106 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 14, 2017

Reviews

[Laura F-W · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, this book isn’t similar to Armageddon or Deep Impact (although after finishing it I did spend the afternoon watching those films back-to-back; I prefer Deep Impact if only for the better science). So just to clarify, there are no inspiring presidential addresses about the power of hope, or giant tidal waves, or questionable scenes involving animal crackers.

Instead, this gives a detailed but accessible overview of the job of an asteroid hunter, the chances of an asteroid hitting earth, how they are identified and tracked; and potential ways for them to be diverted. Perhaps surprisingly, nuclear warheads come up, and there’s a nice illustration of an asteroid being nuked.

It's basically an overview of a really, really cool job.

It’s written in a straightforward and entertaining way, and I would recommend it for teenagers who are interested in physics and space.

Oh, also:



Just because I can.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asteroids have been making quite a bit of news lately (NASA stated just yesterday - 23 Sept - that they will be prioritizing asteroid detection) so I wanted to read up more on these celestial rocks this #ScienceSeptember.

Astrophysicist and Senior TED Fellow Carrie Nugent communicated this very well in her 2017 TED book ASTEROID HUNTERS.

I listened to the #audiobook 🎧 over the weekend and it sent me down an internet trajectory learning more about asteroids and planetary collisions.

Asteroid Hunters is a short (~120 pages and 2 hrs of audio) and informative look at the science of asteroids, and the author's work in surveying the solar system, and tracing asteroid courses using the NEOWISE space telescope. Nugent discusses the history of discovery, the geology of asteroids, the math and prediction models for asteroid courses, and how and why some asteroids elude detectors... And make the news as 'near collisions', and spawning fear and Hollywood disaster movies.

"An asteroid impact is the only natural disaster we have the technology to prevent. But to prevent an impact, we’d need time–ideally decades– to prepare. Therefore, we must discover all of the potentially hazardous asteroids now." - Carrie Nugent

[Abhijeet Jain · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the fascinating books I read this year. It covers everything, from "origins of asteroid" to "how can we save earth from a devastating collision". Carrie explained how asteroid hunters actually work, various kinds of technology being used to find them and most importantly she revealed things in chronological order, from "how we used to find an asteroid in the past" to "how we find them today".
I loved that she explained working of NEOWISE telescope in such an elegant manner!




I feel fortunate to come across Carrie Nugent's TED talk, hence got to know about this book.

[Snakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good, and I’ve watched some TED talks so I was making comparisons based on that, but this book seemed a little basic and maybe not as exciting as I was anticipating. The topic seemed like it would be super interesting and filled with suspense but overall came across like a funding lecture.

[Tnahsin Garg · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A 100- to 200-meter object hitting us in the wrong place would be a disaster of greater scale than we've ever seen in the historical record.”

Once in a while, when you're browsing the non-fiction section of your local library, you come across a gem that is actually a good read. This is that book.

Written by an actual asteroid hunter, Dr. Nugent gives a very layman-friendly overview of the process by which asteroids are mapped by astronomers and how their significance has evolved over the decades. Published by TED, this book is actually like a great, elegant TED talk that you experience for a brief amount of time and you walk out with a wealth of pleasant knowledge.

I now a feel a little more knowledgeable and intelligent about countless rocky and metallic objects (other than planets and their moons) that orbit our Sun, which may or may not collide with our planet.

Final Verdict: If you are an information sponge, that appreciates stories told nicely, you'll love it.

[Freesiab BookishReview · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like learning about space then you'll love this book! It was a quick 3 hours and the author did a great job of explaining the science of asteroids! Her excitement was also a little contagious. Well written and I think kids from 12 and up through adults would enjoy it. I did!

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asteroid Hunters by Carrie Nugent is a highly recommended quick look at asteroids. This is the published version of a TED talk that would be a good choice for anyone interested in learning more about asteroids, from as young as age 10 to adult. This book could be the foundational inspiration for future asteroid hunters/researchers.
Nugent provides her information about asteroids in accessible easy to comprehend language. She covers what they are and where they come from, but also the bigger question: what would happen if one hit the Earth? We know they have hit the Earth in the past and many adults remember Shoemaker Levy 9 hitting Jupiter. Elementary school children will know that a
meteorite was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. I think most people who are interested in asteroids will remember the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia on February 15, 2013. There were numerous videos available online and they can still be found today with a quick search. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmXy...)

Nugent discusses the different telescopes used to find asteroids, including the infrared NEOWISE, the project on which she is working. "The successful hunt and mapping of asteroids could mean nothing less than saving life on earth." Most asteroids live in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and stay in a stable orbit. Why scientists are busy identifying those asteroids, they are also looking at any whose orbit takes them close to Earth. By the end of 2011, scientists had found "over 90 percent of asteroids bigger than one kilometer across that get close to Earth" and since then even more have been found. Asteroid hunters are continually searching for even smaller, but still potentially destructive asteroids.

This is a short, easy to read and follow look at Nugent's job as an asteroid hunter. As someone who has spent more than one night watching the sky during meteor showers I guess the one drawback for me was the lack of real pictures in the book. You don't forget seeing a fireball or an especially active shower. There are illustrations, probably made for the TED talk, but it would be nice to see some real photographs. This is especially true of some big events that I recall being in awe over - Shoemaker Levy 9 hitting Jupiter and the Chelyabinsk, Russia meteor.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Simon & Schuster.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/0...

[Enzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing is the book attracted me because I love "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact"so what exactly is an Asteroid hunter. Yeah even Tornado-hunter came to mind. But I digress.
Carrie Nugent has a short book described exactly what an Asteroid Hunter is and believe me we all should care and assist.
She also puts us mostly up-to-date on what is happening in the world of Asteroid discoveries and some facts that are still hard to believe.
Yes, the book is short, but you'll find yourself stopping grabbing your laptop, iPad, or phone and searching what you are reading. I can't remember a book that made me look up stuff as much as this one. I really enjoyed the days reading the book. I am going to keep up with some sites because the information is really interesting.
So go ahead get the book and then grab some pop-corn and watch "Armageddon". I really like that movie.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A breezy and accessible reminder of how awe inspiring science and the universe are.

[Renay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice introductory text on how we collaborate internationally to find and identify asteroids. Super readable for non-science folks. :D

[Kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic overview of asteroid hunting! There was never a dry moment in this book - a nice, quick, entertaining read. Carrie Nugent also works on the NEOWISE team, so bonus points to her!

[Lori Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book!! Love the science of space. Thought provoking as well as interesting.

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short book that give you a brief insight into the world of Asteroid Hunters. It's not overly technical and can easily be digested in an after (or three in my case).

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great short book (and even better audiobook) about asteroids, the search for asteroids and people searching, and the mitigation of the potential existential risk of a large asteroid hitting Earth.

The author, Dr Carrie Nugent, is pretty famous (especially for a scientist) through TED Talks, a great podcast (Spacepod), and other science outreach. Her day job is working on the NEO-WISE mission, one of the top space based survey tools to find asteroids, but unlike many scientists, she is gifted with an ability to explain science concepts clearly to non-experts.

Overall, this book is a pretty basic overview of the topic, accessible to anyone, but because it is so clear and well presented, it is great even if you already know a lot of the information. It overlaps a lot with the Spacepod podcast, both in style and content, but is interesting even for a regular listener.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Nugent's voice, as a writer, is dripping with sincerity. The language and delivery are clear, thoughtful, and generous to the reader and audience. She takes a highly technical subject and makes it accessible to a broad audience without ever talking down to her audience. This book can be enjoyed at any age and form any educational background. Really, the only group of people who might not learn something interesting are probably asteroid scientists themselves, but I imagine they will still enjoy the book as it will give them an opportunity to read about their friends and colleagues:)

[Wilde Sky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book describes the work of the teams of people that hunt for asteroids that are close to Earth.

The author is obviously super keen on her subject and there were some extremely interesting parts of this book (for instance I learnt the difference between a comet and an asteroid) but the flow of the book was a bit muddled and it could have been more in depth.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 4.5 of 5

There were three main reasons I wanted to read this book. 1) Simple curiosity over what sort of work an asteroid hunter does 2) the fact that this is connected with the TedTalks series, and 3) my son is studying to be an astrophysicist and I'm curious about what sort of jobs he might be looking at in the not-too-distant future.

So, what is an asteroid hunter? It is someone who is studying and mapping space in our solar system and plotting the courses for all the large rocks (asteroids) that could pose a threat to the earth should they be on a collision course.

It's not a fast-paced action sort of job. It's a lot of slow, methodical work. And as Nugent points out, much of the population isn't too worried about an asteroid strike. When was the last one? The last devastating strike? But thanks to some 'near' misses recently, and some Hollywood doomsday flicks featuring asteroids as the evil killer, asteroid hunting has gotten a little more recognition.

It's probably pretty difficult to talk about something that requires a good commit of physics without getting too technical and I have to admit that there were times, even in this slim book, that the science got a little too technical for me, but Nugent does a fine job of keeping it simple for those of us who are pretty simple laymen.

A couple of things that I hadn't thought too much about before... those meteor showers that we enjoy watching (for me it's usually on those August nights) - those "streaks of light are caused by very small rocks; most are about as big as a grain of sand, some as large as a pea." And as Nugent adds: "It's pretty amazing when you think about ; you're actually able to see the flash from something as small as a grain of sand from over (60 miles) away." That is pretty incredible, and it does make you pause and consider what it might be like if that rock were even as big as a car.

One other thing that I picked up on (among other things) is that the telescopes used for asteroid hunting can vary. The type that Nugent herself works with sees the sky in infrared. Asteroids may be dark rock and would only reflect the light of the sun if at the correct angle or if the sun were not blocked by another object. But all objects are warmed by the sun to some degree, and an infrared telescope will see an object that a 'normal' magnifying telescope wouldn't.

It's amazing how many asteroids are already discovered and tracked and amazing how many more might actually be out there, but I do feel better knowing that there are people like Nugent keeping the planet safe from giant rocks.

Looking for a good book? Asteroid Hunters, by Carrie Nugent, is a brief but thorough examination of what some people do to track the space in our solar system to make sure there are no asteroid on an intercept course with the earth, and if there are, to give our leaders time to take action.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this short book at the library because the name of it struck me. It was a nice break from some of the more serious books I've been reading and there were a couple cool illustrations in there as well.

The author had a sense of humor. She had fun teaching some obvious things, like don't point your telescope at the sun. This is, incidentally, the reason why asteroids can still sneak up on us. If they approach Earth from the direction of the sun, we can't see them. This is what happened when the Chelyabinsk meteor hit Earth. But despite this surprise, the author convinced me that worrying about asteroids hitting Earth is not worth my time. A meteor the size of the one that hit Chelyabinsk only comes every hundred years or so.

The last chapter is cool because the author talks about some methods for deflecting asteroids off a collision path with Earth. We have a few ideas including hitting the asteroid with something heavy, putting something in orbit around it to exert a gravitational force on it, or using the nuclear option. Any of these options requires having a lot of time to plan because the devices we would need in order to do this are not built and waiting around to be used. So our best defense is to document the orbits of as many asteroids as we can find.

A lot of this book was review of things I already knew but I still liked it and would probably give it 4 stars if it was longer. It would be perfect for teenagers who are interested in Astronomy.

[Costin Manda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part of the TED Books series, Asteroid Hunters is a tiny booklet, with few ideas other than those expressed in Carrie Nugent's TED talk: Adventures of an Asteroid Hunter. They even repeat. It feels like someone wrote a blog post and was in the mood to write and then they thought to make it a book, but without adding more material to the original post.

Nugent presents the job of asteroid hunter, which makes it technologically feasible to detect potentially dangerous asteroids years before they have a chance to do damage to the Earth. In that time frame, changing the rock's trajectory would be within our means. Let us do our job and fund it, she says, and the Earth will be safe from an asteroid impact, a predictable and preventable event.

Bottom line: that's the entire book. No funny anecdotes, no personal stories or insights, no analysis of the world of asteroids and meteors outside the job of finding them. It's informative, terribly bland and a bit repetitive. I didn't like it.

[GS · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short book that provides an overview of our current state of knowledge about asteroids. I especially enjoyed the parts that talk about how we have estimated their total population and how many we have mapped trajectories of, and potential strategies to deal with close approaches to us.

The writing style made me think this is targeted primarily at middle to high-schoolers, but I enjoyed it regardless. Popular science book authors (especially those that write popular physics books) now a days have a tendency to create fat books just for the heck of it, so I also appreciated that this book stuck to topic and did not have random tangential chapters shoved in about how the theory of gravity was developed/ how mysterious our cosmos is etc. etc.

I consumed the audiobook, which is read by the author, and thought the pace of narration was just right as well.

[Aleksandar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got the audiobook version of this very interesting and fascinating introduction into the "scary space rocks that sometimes" (surprisingly often) fall from the sky. I've always assumed that I'd pick up all there is to know about asteroids just from reading science fiction, but I was quite wrong, and this is one excellent read that will fill in the blanks in your understanding of space rocks. I loved the story woven around the science, because the book does this rare trick where it effectively both educates and entertains you, and it feels effortless and organic; if more introductions into complex areas of research were written with this much passion, humor and clarity we would all be getting educated quite effortlessly.

[adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catch the excitement and impact of science

I love this book. It tells the story of an international community of astronomers and astrophysicists who look for and track asteroids with near-Earth orbits. But that story has so many different angles and side stories: from the first discovery of an asteroid and new mathematics that had to be invented to understand its orbit, to combing the deserts of Sudan to find remnants of a recent impact. This book captures the excitement of being a working scientist. Every young person should read this book; it is an inspirational peek into the beauty, rich history, societal impact, and fun that is a career in science.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fun overview of the science and history of asteroid detection, a quick read that covers a lot of interesting topics. And yes, when I think of asteroids I invariably think of Empire Strikes Back and Deep Impact (both of which get referenced in this book) - there's a thrill level associated with asteroids in those movies that makes them particularly memorable. Maybe it's just the nerd in me, but I found the actual information about asteroid hunting to be seriously cool as well, mostly because it's the real deal, and really fascinating stuff. (Ok, yes, it's definitely the nerd in me - not ashamed at all of that.)

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the title of the book is really makes the statement about what this book is all about. If you want to learn about, how scientists are working on asteroids, this is almost like an introduction to the field.

What I love about it the most is the language she uses, the examples she gives and making sure any curious mind whiteout any background in astronomy can benefit from the book. I would highly suggest checking her podcast channel to listen to more awesome work by various scientists. Thank you Dr. Nugent for all the work you do and while doing that not leaving public behind, keeping them updated and informed. Thank you! Thank you!

[miha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zanimivo poslušanje, da asteroidni pas sploh ni tako gost kokr bi si mislili, se pa nenehno spreminja in je zato težko prehoden, kolk pogosti so asteroidi in da so nam ob zadostnem opozorilu prej precej nenevarni oz. smo jim zmožni spremenit pot da falijo Zemljo...

Najbolj všeč mi je pa to da si znanstveniki odkritja in opazovanja delijo po celem svetu - v primeru enega asteroida ki je bil namenjen proti Zemlji in so ga opazovali celo pot, predvidli kam bo piknil in potem ga pobrali, in je bil opazovan tudi iz Slovenije :)

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 4 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

[Ximena Hall Carrillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a clear, concise and clever explanation of all things asteroid related, from what they are, to how they are discovered and measured and even on the possibilities of an Armageddon-like collision with our planet. I learned more than I thought I would on a subject I knew little to nothing about, though as some other readers may point out, it does not delve any deeper than what she talks about in her TED talk. It was a fun and educational read!

[Seven Pesos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ted talks about asteroids. Will this guy ever shut up? Popular science. What is asteroid hunting? What do asteroid hunters do? Little history of asteroids and asteroid hunters. How would we (humanity) deal with an impending asteroid threat? What options are available to us? Yes. Nuking is not off the table. Going Nuclear in Space. Overview of observatories + technology used to hunt asteroids. Changing public opinions on the asteroid threat in the 1990s. Armageddon. Very nicely designed book.

[Martin Dolezal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Krátké, stručné, ale na základní představu dostatečné. Vlastně hledání asteroidů není narozdíl od nějakého lovení galaxií zase tak moc složité, stačí jenom fotit a hledat programem světýlka ;-) Koho by zajímalo něco více podrobného o typech asteroidů, jejich vzniku, apod., tady to nenajde, jde hlavně o to jak se detekují a jak se dají případně odvrátit od Země.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a short and readable book, interesting and very introductory. I enjoyed the length, but at the same time, I wanted more from the book, so I guess I'm the one with the problem for wanting to have my cake & eat it too.