Cosmic Collisions: Asteroid vs. Comet

Cosmic Collisions: Asteroid vs. Comet PDF Author: Marc J. Kuchner
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 1536237108
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Book Description
What happens when two massive hunks of hurtling space debris slam into each other? Welcome to round one in the Cosmic Collisions series—an exciting children’s debut from an expert astrophysicist. There’s a comet speeding in from the outer solar system, and it’s about to slam into an asteroid. Who will be left standing after this interplanetary smackdown? The pockmarked asteroid, a veteran fighter who’s already seen some action? Or the dazzling comet, with its incredible velocity and a tail that stretches millions of miles? Kicking off a dynamic series on cosmic collisions, Asteroid vs. Comet starts by comparing the two opponents, then offers hints and context to encourage readers to use real science to form a hypothesis. Action-packed full-color illustrations with a graphic, comic-book feel will attract reluctant readers and kids who love smash-and-crash, along with budding scientists. Curious readers can find back matter addressing the question of fact versus fiction, how to become a citizen scientist, and comets and asteroids in the news.

Cosmic Collisions: Asteroid vs. Comet

Cosmic Collisions: Asteroid vs. Comet PDF Author: Marc J. Kuchner
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 1536237108
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 47

Get Book Here

Book Description
What happens when two massive hunks of hurtling space debris slam into each other? Welcome to round one in the Cosmic Collisions series—an exciting children’s debut from an expert astrophysicist. There’s a comet speeding in from the outer solar system, and it’s about to slam into an asteroid. Who will be left standing after this interplanetary smackdown? The pockmarked asteroid, a veteran fighter who’s already seen some action? Or the dazzling comet, with its incredible velocity and a tail that stretches millions of miles? Kicking off a dynamic series on cosmic collisions, Asteroid vs. Comet starts by comparing the two opponents, then offers hints and context to encourage readers to use real science to form a hypothesis. Action-packed full-color illustrations with a graphic, comic-book feel will attract reluctant readers and kids who love smash-and-crash, along with budding scientists. Curious readers can find back matter addressing the question of fact versus fiction, how to become a citizen scientist, and comets and asteroids in the news.

Cosmic Collisions

Cosmic Collisions PDF Author: Dana Desonie
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 1466862831
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Cosmic collisions have forever shaped the planets in our solar system, sculpting Earth and our Moon. They are still happening right in our neighborhood, as we saw in July 1994 when comet fragments bombarded the surface of Jupiter. What if a collision of that magnitude were to occur on Earth? Would the effect be anywhere near that of the collision that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago? Scientists have just begun to track distant asteroids and comets that may pose a threat to Earth in years to come. In Scientific American Focus: Cosmic Collisions Dana Desonie traces the history of cosmic collisions and proposes various solutions to what many view as our impending doom, answering these questions and more: -How often does Earth experience a cosmic collision? -Did a massive collision kill off the dinosaurs? -How do scientists track and predict collisions? -What did we learn from the Jupiter collision of 1994? -How real is the threat of a collision in our future? -How can we defend our planet?

Cosmic Collisions: Asteroid Vs. Comet

Cosmic Collisions: Asteroid Vs. Comet PDF Author: Marc J. Kuchner
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 1536227358
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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Book Description
What happens when two massive hunks of hurtling space debris slam into each other? Welcome to round one in the Cosmic Collisions series--an exciting children's debut from an expert astrophysicist. There's a comet speeding in from the outer solar system, and it's about to slam into an asteroid. Who will be left standing after this interplanetary smackdown? The pockmarked asteroid, a veteran fighter who's already seen some action? Or the dazzling comet, with its incredible velocity and a tail that stretches millions of miles? Kicking off a dynamic series on cosmic collisions, Asteroid vs. Comet starts by comparing the two opponents, then offers hints and context to encourage readers to use real science to form a hypothesis. Action-packed full-color illustrations with a graphic, comic-book feel will attract reluctant readers and kids who love smash-and-crash along with budding scientists. Curious readers can find back matter addressing the question of fact versus fiction, how to become a citizen scientist, and comets and asteroids in the news.

Collision Course!

Collision Course! PDF Author: Fred Bortz
Publisher: StarWalk Kids Media
ISBN: 1630831123
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
Bortz takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the origins of the universe, the impact of comets and asteroids on the history of the Earth and the Moon, what we have learned from current research about these space rocks, and what we might expect in the future. Newly updated in 2014 to include the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteorite, as well as the latest technological developments.

Asteroids, Comets, and Meteorites

Asteroids, Comets, and Meteorites PDF Author: Jon Erickson
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438109628
Category : Asteroids
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
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.

Fire in the Sky

Fire in the Sky PDF Author: Gordon L. Dillow
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 1501187759
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This “accessible and always entertaining” (Booklist) combination of history, pop science, and in-depth reporting offers a fascinating account of the asteroids that hit Earth long ago and those streaming toward us now, as well as how prepared we are against asteroid-caused catastrophe. One of these days, warns Gordon Dillow, the Earth will be hit by a comet or asteroid of potentially catastrophic size. The only question is when. In the meantime, we need to get much better at finding objects hurtling our way, and if they’re large enough to penetrate the atmosphere without burning up, figure out what to do about them. We owe many of science’s most important discoveries to the famed Meteor Crater, a mile-wide dimple on the Colorado Plateau created by an asteroid hit 50,000 years ago. In his masterfully researched Fire in the Sky, Dillow unpacks what the Crater has to tell us. Prior to the early 1900s, the world believed that all craters—on the Earth and Moon—were formed by volcanic activity. Not so. The revelation that Meteor Crater and others like it were formed by impacts with space objects has led to a now accepted theory about what killed off the dinosaurs, and it has opened up a new field of asteroid observation that is brimming with urgency. Dillow looks at great asteroid hits of the past and modern-day asteroid hunters and defense planning experts, including America’s first Planetary Defense Officer. Satellite sensors confirm that a Hiroshima-scale blast occurs in the atmosphere every year, and a smaller, one-kiloton blast every month. While Dillow makes clear that the objects above can be deadly, he consistently inspires awe with his descriptions of their size, makeup, and origins. Both a riveting work of popular science and a warning to not take for granted the space objects hurtling overhead, Fire in the Sky is, ultimately, a testament to our universe’s celestial wonders.

Cosmic Impact

Cosmic Impact PDF Author: Andrew May
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785784943
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
As end-of-the-world scenarios go, an apocalyptic collision with an asteroid or comet is the new kid on the block, gaining respectability only in the last decade of the 20th century with the realisation that the dinosaurs had been wiped out by just such an impact. Now the science community is making up for lost time, with worldwide efforts to track the thousands of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, and plans for high-tech hardware that could deflect an incoming object from a collision course – a procedure depicted, with little regard for scientific accuracy, in several Hollywood movies. Astrophysicist and science writer Andrew May disentangles fact from fiction in this fast-moving and entertaining account, covering the nature and history of comets and asteroids, the reason why some orbits are more hazardous than others, the devastating local and global effects that an impact event would produce, and – more optimistically – the way future space missions could avert a catastrophe.

Collision Earth!

Collision Earth! PDF Author: Peter Grego
Publisher: Blandford Press
ISBN: 9780713727425
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
What's the likelihood of the impact on earth of debris from outer space? Even near misses can change our climate, while a major impact could be catastrophic, equivalent to that which caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs and the rise of mammalian mastery of the planet. In this fascinating survey of the great collisions and the dangerous close passes of recent and prehistoric times, you'll find detailed chronicles of the effect on our earth of comets, meteors, meteorites, meteor storms, shooting stars, cosmic famous fireballs, UFOs, and other phenomena.

Catastrophic Events Caused by Cosmic Objects

Catastrophic Events Caused by Cosmic Objects PDF Author: Vitaly Adushkin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402064527
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
An asteroid or comet will inevitably strike the Earth some day, and potentially cause great destruction. This volume considers hazards due to collisions with cosmic objects, particularly in light of recent investigations of impacts by the authors. Each chapter, written by an expert, contains an overview of an aspect and new findings in the field. Coverage describes and numerically estimates the main hazardous effects.

Impact!

Impact! PDF Author: Gerrit L. Verschuur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019028370X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
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.