BOOKS ABOUT ASTEROID IMPACTS
(Investigator 203, 2022, March)
Book Search
The book Bombarded Earth, published in 1964, has received past mentions
in Investigator Magazine in connection with the interpretation of
Genesis 1:2.
A recent search was done to find out what other textbooks (as opposed
to fiction) are available about asteroid impacts. The search leaves
Bombarded Earth as still the oldest one known to "Investigator".
The search was limited to a few hours and used the Worldwide Web, in
particular the website pdfdrive.com. You may remember that PDF Drive
was once discussed in Investigator under the heading "Get 80 Million
Books For Free".
Comet
The second oldest book Investigator is aware of, is Comet (1985). In it Carl Sagan explains:
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was customary to think
of comets as Aristotle had — as gasses, vapours, 'exhalations' from the
Earth, and perhaps from the Sun and the planets as well. Newton,
clearsighted as usual, thought otherwise. He noticed that the comet of
1680 came very close to the Sun; at perihelion, 0.006 of an Astronomical Unit, a little under a million
kilometres. This should, he estimated, have heated the comet to the
temperature of red-hot iron, from which he deduced that the comet could
not be composed only of vapours and exhalations — because then its
substance would have been rapidly dissipated during perihelion passage.
Instead, he concluded that the 'bodies of comets are solid, compact,
fixed, and durable, like the bodies of planets'. Since the tail of this
comet was 'much more splendid' just after perihelion than before,
Newton concluded that the heat of the sun produced the tail: 'The tail
is nothing else but a very fine vapour, which the head or nucleus of
the comet emits by its heat.' (p. 90)
Many comets become asteroids when their gases have burnt off during numerous passages around the Sun.
Books Published
If the number of books found in Investigator's search is representative
it means that asteroid impacts as a topic of concern is progressively
going global. The topic is of ever-increasing interest to astronomers,
researchers, writers and the public!
|
Time period |
Books Published |
1960s
|
1
|
1970s
|
0
|
1980s
|
1
|
1990s
|
8
|
|
2001-2010 |
10
|
|
2011-2020 |
20
|
2021
|
4
|
The Asteroid-Impacts Book List
The books discovered in the Investigator search are:
• 1985 Comet, C. Sagan & A. Druyan
• 1994 Hazards Due to Comets and Asteroids, T. Gehrels (Editor)
• 1995 Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The
Search for the Million Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth, D.
Steel & A.C. Clarke
• 1996 Asteroid: Earth Destroyer or New Frontier? P. Barnes-Svarney
• 1996 Killer Asteroids, M. Poynter
• 1996 The Meteor Crater Story, D. Smith
• 1996 Impact!: The Threat of Comets and Asteroids, G.L. Verschuur
• 1998 Comets: Creators and Destroyers, D.H. Levy
• 1999 Impact Earth Asteroids Comets and Meteoroids The Growing Threat, A. Atkinson
• 2002 Asteroids, Comets, and Meteorites: Cosmic Invaders of the Earth, J. Erickson
• 2003 Impact Jupiter: The Crash Of Comet Shoemaker-levy 9, D.H. Levy
• 2004 Mitigation Of Hazardous Comets And Asteroids,
M.J.S. Belton, T.H. Morgan, N. Samarasinha, D.K. Yeomans (Editors)
• 2005 Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards, D. Morrison
• 2007 Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society, P. Bobrowsky & H. Rickman (Editors)
• 2009 AF/A8XC Natural Impact Hazard (Asteroid Strike), USAF
• 2009 Asteroids and Meteorites: Catastrophic Collisions With Earth, T. Kusky
• 2009 Dealing with the Threat to Earth from Asteroids and Comets, I. Bekey (Editor)
• 2009 Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction, B. McGuire
• 2010 Falling Stars: A Guide to Meteors & Meteorites 2nd Edition, M.D. Reynolds
• 2013 Killer Comet: What the Carolina Bays tell us, A. Zamora
• 2014 Incoming Asteroid!: What Could We Do About It?, D. Lunan
• 2014 The Asteroid Threat Defending Our Planet From Deadly Near-Earth Objects, W.E. Burrows
• 2014 The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, L. Dartnell
• 2015 Advanced mission planning and impact risk
assessment of near-earth asteroids in application to planetary defense,
G. Vardaxes
• 2015 The Role of the Moon on Close Encounters and Impacts of Near-Earth Asteroids with the Earth, B. Akos
• 2016 Asteroid Apocalypse: Countdown to Rapture — The Winds of Armageddon, R. Reimer
• 2016 Asteroids Astronomical and Geological Bodies, T.H. Burbine
• 2016 Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us, D.K. Yeomans
• 2017 Assessment and Mitigation of Asteroid Impact
Hazards: Proceedings of the 2015 Barcelona Asteroid Day,
J.M.
Trigo-Rodríguez,
M. Gritsevich & H. Palme (Editors)
• 2017 Asteroid Impact Risk, C. Rumpf
• 2017 Chicxulub: The Impact and Tsunami: The Story
of the Largest Known Asteroid to Hit the Earth, D. Shonting & C.
Ezrailson
• 2017 Impact! Asteroids and the Science of Saving the World, E. Rusch & K. Anderson
• 2017 Near Earth Asteroids A Chronology of Milestones, International Astronomical Union
• 2017 Our Asteroid Survival Designing for Survival, L.G.A. Woodhead
• 2018 Asteroids Impacts, Crustal Evolution and
Related Mineral Systems with Special Reference to Australia, A.Y.
Glikson & F. Pirajno
• 2019 Cosmic Impact Understanding the Threat to Earth from Asteroids and Comets, A. May
• 2019 Fire in the Sky Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth, G.L. Dillow
• 2019 Planetary Defense: Global Collaboration for
Defending Earth from Asteroids and Comets, N. Schmidt (Editor)
• 2020 End Times A Brief Guide To The End Of The World, B. Walsh
• 2021 Asteroids, C.J. Cunningham
• 2021 Asteroids How Love, Fear, and Greed Will Determine Our Future in Space, M. Elvis
• 2021 Next Asteroid Impact: Survival Manual, 2nd edition, I.R. Ferrin
• 2021 The Asteroid Apocalypse The Greatest War in Science, R. Raghuram
The End of the World?
The 2017 book Near Earth Asteroids A Chronology of Milestones lists
discoveries of asteroids, their size, and how close they came to Earth.
This book is not about major impacts, nor describes their
effects, but does mention small asteroids that broke up in the
atmosphere with pieces hitting the ground. The book also gives the date
of next return, where calculated, of asteroids that passed the Earth or
Moon. This raises the question of whether any will hit planet Earth.
The final asteroid listed in A Chronology of Milestones is 2 kilometres
in diameter and has a "1-in-300 chance of impacting" on March 16, 2880.
Two kilometres diameter is big enough to devastate whole continents,
poison the atmosphere, make global climate deadly, and ultimately leave
human survivors few in number.
The increasing interest in asteroids and their impacts began in 1980
when the new theory that an asteroid impact terminated the age of
dinosaurs got worldwide publicity.