‘The Oxford Dictionary of Earth Sciences’ by Michael Allaby
If there is one thing that Oxford University Press can produce better than any other publisher, it’s a dictionary. This is the third edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Earth Sciences, published in March 2008 and edited by Michael Allaby. More than 6,250 terms have been updated for this new edition with numerous additional entries contributed by the advances in planetary science, and there are more than 130 diagrams describing forms and processes. It covers an extremely broad range of topics, sweeping from the movement of atoms within minerals to fossilization processes to cosmic dust. When...
Read More‘My Life on Mars’ by Colin Pillinger
The triumphs and tragedy of Beagle 2, the UK’s mission to search for life on Mars, must surely be familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in planetary astronomy or space science. The achievement of getting an underfunded lander from the drawing-board to the Red Planet is a remarkable one. While there remains a very positive legacy (I’d bet more people in the UK know about Beagle 2 than know about Mars Express), it was, and is, a bitter disappointment that the lander failed at the very last hurdle. No-one can feel the disappointment more keenly than Colin Pillinger, the...
Read More‘Megacatastrophes! Nine Strange Ways the World Could End’ by David Darling & Dirk Schulze-Makuch
In Megacatastrophes!, we are treated to a light-hearted tour through a number of candidates (in fact, far more than nine…) for how the human race could eventually end. From grey-goo to supervolcanoes, ice ages to black holes produced by the LHC, the authors give us a run down of the history and science behind each possibility, explaining in plain language their effects on the human race and planet Earth and as a whole. Each disaster is covered in detail, although the authors betray their backgrounds by giving considerably more space to some, like gamma ray bursters and superflares,...
Read More‘The Medea Hypothesis’ by Peter Ward
The Gaia Hypothesis, named after the caring Greek Goddess of the Earth, has held sway in thought about planetary systems for decades now, and posits that life is an intrinsically balancing influence which acts to stabilise the Earth’s environment to maintain its suitability for life. Here, Ward proposes an important alternative interpretation of events over Earth’s history, that life is not inherently regulative, but destabilising and self-destructive. He calls this idea the Medea Hypothesis, named after the wife of Jason the Argonaut who killed her own children. A central tenet...
Read More‘The Martian Surface: Composition, Mineralogy, and Physical Properties’ by James Bell
With the current renewed interest in questions left unanswered since the Viking missions, Mars science is presently progressing more swiftly than ever. New observations are gushing in from Phoenix, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Mars Express. As James Bell comments, ‘Mars is a moving target, but at some point one has to let the arrow fly’. In The Martian Surface, Bell’s arrow strikes in the early days of MRO, before the launch of Phoenix and just as the Mars Global Surveyor is finishing its nine year marathon. This comprehensive collection of in-situ and orbital observations of the...
Read More‘The Living Cosmos’ by Chris Impey
Chris Impey is a professor of astronomy at University of Arizona, and has done a fine job with this latest effort at bringing astrobiology to the popular science market. Impey has clearly done his research thoroughly, and interviewed a great number of the key scientists whilst writing the book. The Living Cosmos opens with a solid review of the history of astronomy and philosophical thought on the nature of the universe and our world’s place within it. This is not often covered in astrobiology popular science books, and provides crucial context to the significance of modern...
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