Natalie Starkey

Catching Stardust (eBook, ePUB)

Comets, Asteroids and the Birth of the Solar System

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

'Astonishing' - New Scientist

Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious - comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its planets. Locked within each of these extra-terrestrial objects is the 4.6-billion-year wisdom of Solar System events, and by studying them at close quarters using spacecraft we can coerce them into revealing their closely-guarded secrets. This offers us the chance to answer some fundamental questions about our planet and its inhabitants.

Exploring comets and asteroids also allows us to shape the story of Earth's future, enabling us to protect our precious planet from the threat of a catastrophic impact from space, and maybe to even recover valuable raw materials from them. This cosmic bounty could be as useful in space as it is on Earth, providing the necessary fuel and supplies for humans as they voyage into deep space to explore more distant locations within the Solar System.

Catching Stardust tells the story of these enigmatic celestial objects, revealing how scientists are using them to help understand a crucial time in our history - the birth of the Solar System, and everything contained within it.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. März 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781472944030
• Artikelnr.: 51425768

Autorenporträt

Natalie Starkey is a geologist, cosmochemist and science communicator. Natalie's doctorate at Edinburgh University on the geochemistry of Arctic volcanoes saw her travelling to the volcanic lava-fields of Iceland and the ancient volcanoes of northern Scotland, and she also spent time as a volcanologist on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. Later, Natalie's postdoctoral research expanded to include the analysis of rock samples from space, which led to her first popular science book, Catching Stardust (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2018). Her latest book is Fire and Ice, an exploration of the volcanoes of the solar system.

Natalie received a British Science Association Media Fellowship in 2013 to work with the Guardian. She has been a science host on Neil deGrasse Tyson's popular StarTalk Radio, and is now Science Media Producer for Chemistry World at The Royal Society of Chemistry.

@starkeystardust / nataliestarkey.com

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: A 4.6-Billion-Year Journey into the Deep Freeze
Chapter 3: Comets and Asteroids on Earth
Chapter 4: Shooting Stars and Space Dust
Chapter 5: Water and Life on Earth and in Space
Chapter 6: Taking the Science to Space
Chapter 7: The Stardust Mission
Chapter 8: The Rosetta Mission
Chapter 9: Space Mining
Chapter 10: Mission 'Save Planet Earth'
Epilogue
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Index

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Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: A 4.6-Billion-Year Journey into the Deep Freeze
Chapter 3: Comets and Asteroids on Earth
Chapter 4: Shooting Stars and Space Dust
Chapter 5: Water and Life on Earth and in Space
Chapter 6: Taking the Science to Space
Chapter 7: The Stardust Mission
Chapter 8: The Rosetta Mission
Chapter 9: Space Mining
Chapter 10: Mission 'Save Planet Earth'

Epilogue
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Index

Rezensionen

Well presented and bridges many gaps between different observational methods. Science