Asteroids
Subtitle: A History (Smithsonian History of Aviation & Spaceflight Series)
Edition: 1st edition
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press
Published: September 17, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 228
ISBN-13: 9781560983897
Subjects: Planets & asteroids; Science; Planets; Technology; History: World; Science/Mathematics; Astronomy - Solar System; Science / General; Astronomy - General; Aeronautics & Astronautics; Asteroids
Description: "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."--BOOK JACKET.