Download or read book Geological Implications of Impacts of Large Asteroids and Comets on the Earth written by Leon Theodore Silver and published by Geological Society of America. This book was released on 1983-02-01 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geological Implications of Impacts of Large Asteroids and Comets of the Earth written by and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geological Implications of Impacts of Large Asteroids and Comets on the Earth written by Leon Theodore Silver and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geological Implications of Impacts of Large Asteroids and Comets on the Earth written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Geological implications of impacts of large asteroids and comets of the earth papers from a Conference on Large Body Impacts and Terrestrial Evolution geological climatological and biological implications held at Snowbird Utah Oct 19 22 1981 written by Leon T. Silver and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Comet Asteroid Impacts and Human Society written by Peter T. Bobrowsky and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-06-10 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading specialists in various disciplines were first invited to a multidisciplinary workshop funded by ICSU on the topic to gain a better appreciation and perspective on the subject of comet/asteroid impacts as viewed by different disciplines. This volume provides a necessary link between various disciplines and comet/asteroid impacts.
Download or read book Geological Implications of impacts of large asteroids and coments on the earth written by and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hazards Due to Comets and Asteroids written by Tom Gehrels and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 1317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1993, the U.S. Department of Defense declassified information dealing with frequent explosions in the upper atmosphere caused by meteoric impact. It is estimated that impacts have occurred of a magnitude equivalent to the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima. Not all such space voyagers meet their end in the atmosphere, however; huge craters attest to the bombardment of earth over millions of years, and a major impact may have resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs. An impact in Siberia near the beginning of this century proves that such events are not confined to geologic time. Hazards Due to Comets and Asteroids marks a significant step in the attempt to come to grips with the threats posed by such phenomena. It brings together more than one hundred scientists from around the world, who draw on observational and theoretical research to focus on the technical problems related to all aspects of dealing with these hazards: searching for and identifying hazardous comets and asteroids; describing their statistics and characteristics; intercepting and altering the orbits of dangerous objects; and applying existent technologies—rocket boosters, rendezvous and soft-landing techniques, instrumentation—to such missions. The book considers defensive options for diverting or disrupting an approaching body, including solar sails, kinetic-energy impacts, nuclear explosives, robotic mass drivers, and various propulsion systems. A cataclysmic impact posing a threat to life on Earth is a possibility that tomorrow's technology is capable of averting. This book examines in depth the reality of the threat and proposes practical measures that can be initiated now should we ever need to deal with it.
Download or read book The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution written by Andrew Y. Glikson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When in 1981 Louis and Walter Alvarez, the father and son team, unearthed a tell-tale Iridium-rich sedimentary horizon at the 65 million years-old Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary at Gubbio, Italy, their find heralded a paradigm shift in the study of terrestrial evolution. Since the 1980s the discovery and study of asteroid impact ejecta in the oldest well-preserved terrains of Western Australia and South Africa, by Don Lowe, Gary Byerly, Bruce Simonson, Scott Hassler, the author and others, and the documentation of new exposed and buried impact structures in several continents, have led to a resurgence of the idea of the catastrophism theory of Cuvier, previously largely supplanted by the uniformitarian theory of Hutton and Lyell. Several mass extinction of species events are known to have occurred in temporal proximity to large asteroid impacts, global volcanic eruptions and continental splitting. Likely links are observed between asteroid clusters and the 580 Ma acritarch radiation, end-Devonian extinction, end-Triassic extinction and end-Jurassic extinction. New discoveries of ~3.5 – 3.2 Ga-old impact fallout units in South Africa have led Don Lowe and Gary Byerly to propose a protracted prolongation of the Late Heavy Bombardment (~3.95-3.85 Ga) in the Earth-Moon system. Given the difficulty in identifying asteroid impact ejecta units and buried impact structures, it is likely new discoveries of impact signatures are in store, which would further profoundly alter models of terrestrial evolution. .
Download or read book Impact written by Gerrit L. Verschuur and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-12-18 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most scientists now agree that some sixty-five million years ago, an immense comet slammed into the Yucatan, detonating a blast twenty million times more powerful than the largest hydrogen bomb, punching a hole ten miles deep in the earth. Trillions of tons of rock were vaporized and launched into the atmosphere. For a thousand miles in all directions, vegetation burst into flames. There were tremendous blast waves, searing winds, showers of molten matter from the sky, earthquakes, and a terrible darkness that cut out sunlight for a year, enveloping the planet in freezing cold. Thousands of species of plants and animals were obliterated, including the dinosaurs, some of which may have become extinct in a matter of hours. In Impact, Gerrit L. Verschuur offers an eye-opening look at such catastrophic collisions with our planet. Perhaps more important, he paints an unsettling portrait of the possibility of new collisions with earth, exploring potential threats to our planet and describing what scientists are doing right now to prepare for this awful possibility. Every day something from space hits our planet, Verschuur reveals. In fact, about 10,000 tons of space debris fall to earth every year, mostly in meteoric form. The author recounts spectacular recent sightings, such as over Allende, Mexico, in 1969, when a fireball showered the region with four tons of fragments, and the twenty-six pound meteor that went through the trunk of a red Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York, in 1992 (the meteor was subsequently sold for $69,000 and the car itself fetched $10,000). But meteors are not the greatest threat to life on earth, the author points out. The major threats are asteroids and comets. The reader discovers that astronomers have located some 350 NEAs ("Near Earth Asteroids"), objects whose orbits cross the orbit of the earth, the largest of which are 1627 Ivar (6 kilometers wide) and 1580 Betula (8 kilometers). Indeed, we learn that in 1989, a bus-sized asteroid called Asclepius missed our planet by 650,000 kilometers (a mere six hours), and that in 1994 a sixty-foot object passed within 180,000 kilometers, half the distance to the moon. Comets, of course, are even more deadly. Verschuur provides a gripping description of the small comet that exploded in the atmosphere above the Tunguska River valley in Siberia, in 1908, in a blinding flash visible for several thousand miles (every tree within sixty miles of ground zero was flattened). He discusses Comet Swift-Tuttle--"the most dangerous object in the solar system"--a comet far larger than the one that killed off the dinosaurs, due to pass through earth's orbit in the year 2126. And he recounts the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994, as some twenty cometary fragments struck the giant planet over the course of several days, casting titanic plumes out into space (when Fragment G hit, it outshone the planet on the infrared band, and left a dark area at the impact site larger than the Great Red Spot). In addition, the author describes the efforts of Spacewatch and other groups to locate NEAs, and evaluates the idea that comet and asteroid impacts have been an underrated factor in the evolution of life on earth. Astronomer Herbert Howe observed in 1897: "While there are not definite data to reason from, it is believed that an encounter with the nucleus of one of the largest comets is not to be desired." As Verschuur shows in Impact, we now have substantial data with which to support Howe's tongue-in-cheek remark. Whether discussing monumental tsunamis or the innumerable comets in the Solar System, this book will enthrall anyone curious about outer space, remarkable natural phenomenon, or the future of the planet earth.
Download or read book Impact Earth written by Austen Atkinson and published by Virgin Books Limited. This book was released on 1999 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As more asteroids enter our solar system, our chances of a collision increase by the day. This work examines the impact phenomenon describing the importance of Deathrock collisions in the Earth's history, the potential dangers and alleged cover-ups of near misses.
Download or read book Chicxulub The Impact and Tsunami written by David Shonting and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of the catastrophic impact of the giant 10 Km asteroid Chicxulub into the ancient Gulf of Mexico 65.5 million years ago. The book begins with a discussion of the nature of asteroids and the likelihood of future Earth-impacts. The story then turns to the discovery of a global sediment layer attributed to the fallout from the impact and a piecing together of the evidence that revealed a monster crater, buried under the Gulf. Reviewed is the myriad of geological and fossil evidence that suggested the disastrous sequence of events occurring when a "nuclear-like" explosion ripped through the sea, Earth, and atmosphere, thus forming the mega-crater and tsunami. The aftermath of the Chicxulub's event initiated decades and more of major global climate changes including a "Nuclear Winter" of freezing darkness and blistering greenhouse warming. A chapter is dedicated to the science of tsunamis and their model generation, including a portrayal of the globally rampaging Chicxulub waves. The asteroid's global devastation killed off some 70% of animal and plant life including the dinosaurs. The study of an ancient Cambrian fossil bed suggests how "roll of the dice" events can affect the future evolution of life on Earth. We see how Chicxulub's apparent destruction of the dinosaurs, followed by the their replacement with small mammals, altered forever the progress of human evolution. This book presents a fascinating glimpse through the lens of the natural sciences - the geology, climatology, and oceanography, of the effects of an enormous astronomical event.
Download or read book Volcanism Impacts and Mass Extinctions Causes and Effects written by Gerta Keller and published by Geological Society of America. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Comprises articles stemming from the March 2013 international conference at London's Natural History Museum. Researchers across geological, geophysical, and biological disciplines present key results from research concerning the causes of mass extinction events"--
Download or read book 250 Million Years of Earth History in Central Italy written by Christian Koeberl and published by Geological Society of America. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Umbria-Marche Apennines are entirely made of marine sedimentary rocks, representing a continuous record of the geotectonic evolution of an epeiric sea from the Early Triassic to the Pleistocene. The book includes reviews and original research works accomplished with the support of the Geological Observatory of Coldigioco"--
Download or read book Asteroids Comets and Meteorites written by Jon Erickson and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at asteroids, comets and meteorites, including what they are, how they are formed, how they have affected the history of Earth, and definitions of related terms.
Download or read book Asteroids Impacts Crustal Evolution and Related Mineral Systems with Special Reference to Australia written by Andrew Y. Glikson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a comprehensive overview of Australian impact structures and related mineralization, including a discussion of the significance of many of these structures for crustal evolution. The book focuses in particular on Archaean impact ejecta/fallout units in the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia, large exposed and buried impact structures, and on the geophysical evidence for possible to probable impact structures. Thanks to their long-term geological stability, Precambrian and younger terrains in the Australian continent contain 38 confirmed impact structures and 43 ring and dome structures, many of which constitute possible to probable asteroid impact structures. The impact structures have been the subject of more than half a century of studies and range from several tens of meter-large craters to buried structures larger than 100 km in diameter. Discoveries of impact fallout units in the Pilbara Craton have defined the Pilbara as one of the two best documented terrains where Archaean impact ejecta/fallout deposits are identified, the other terrain being the Kaapvaal Craton in southern Africa. A synthesis of evidence from both cratons indicates periods of large asteroid bombardments during ~3.47 – 2.48 billion years-ago, including peak bombardment about 3.25—3.22 billion years-ago. The latter period coincides with an abrupt transformation of an early Archaean granite-greenstone crust to mid to late Archaean semi-continental crustal regimes, underpinning the significance of heavy asteroid impact events for crustal evolution. Apart from proven impact structures, Australian terrains display a range of circular features, including morphological and drainage rings, circular lakes, volcanic craters, tectonic domes, oval granite bodies, mafic igneous plugs, salt diapirs, and magnetic, gravity and seismic anomalies, many of which are of a likely impact origin. Thermal and hydrothermal processes associated with impact cratering bear important consequences for the formation of mineral deposits, such as Ni at Sudbury, Pb-Zn at Siljan and Kentland. Impact structures may also provide sites for the accumulation of hydrocarbons, whereas in some instances fracturing associated with impact structures allows outward migration of oil and gas.
Download or read book Asteroid Impact Risk written by Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the complexity of impact hazards associated with asteroids and comets. The challenge in this regard lies in the heterogeneous nature of these bodies that endanger our planet, which is why we are conducting new experiments to better understand their unique physicochemical properties. Several generations of astronomers have tracked and mapped the orbits of asteroids and comets over the past few centuries, and telescopic surveys have only begun to discover “new” interstellar objects. In addition, cutting-edge software allow our computers to combine the orbits of these elusive bodies to study how they evolve over time and seek to match asteroid complexes as fragments of asteroidal and cometary disruptions. Impact hazards represent one of the greatest threats to the survival of human beings in the medium term. Geological studies show that the stratigraphic record holds clear geological evidence of these rare but transcendental encounters in the history of life on our planet. The study and quantification of past catastrophes can give us clues to face future challenges in the form of potential impacts. Further, it would be illogical to assume that Earth’s interaction with space is limited to major impacts. Every night, Earth is struck by millions of particles, and dozens of meteor showers occur around the globe every year. The study of lake and ocean sediments reveals the magnitude of the continuous contribution of interplanetary matter reaching Earth: roughly 100,000 tons per year. Accordingly, the goal of this book is to underscore the need for society-wide awareness of the dangers associated with asteroid and comet impacts, on the basis of scientific evidence and with no intention of sparking alarmism. After all, we ourselves may only be the fruit of an opportunity given to mammals sixty-five million years ago to evolve after the conflagration that would be the downfall of the dinosaurs. If we have learned to read Earth’s geological history, we should consider ourselves a very fortunate species, and its teachings should equip us to face this problem. The also book emphasizes the role of space missions to gain insights on these bodies, particularly describing the relevance of the DART (NASA) and Hera (ESA) missions to deflect and study Dimorphos, respectively, the small satellite of the Didymos binary asteroid.
