Author : Ralph Lorenz
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 27,24 MB
Release : 2002-05-16
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780521793483
A revealing account of the second largest moon in our solar system.
Author : Ralph Lorenz
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 47,59 MB
Release : 2010-07-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 1400834759
For twenty-five years following the Voyager mission, scientists speculated about Saturn's largest moon, a mysterious orb clouded in orange haze. Finally, in 2005, the Cassini-Huygens probe successfully parachuted down through Titan's atmosphere, all the while transmitting images and data. In the early 1980s, when the two Voyager spacecraft skimmed past Titan, Saturn's largest moon, they transmitted back enticing images of a mysterious world concealed in a seemingly impenetrable orange haze. Titan Unveiled is one of the first general interest books to reveal the startling new discoveries that have been made since the arrival of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan. Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton take readers behind the scenes of this mission. Launched in 1997, Cassini entered orbit around Saturn in summer 2004. Its formidable payload included the Huygens probe, which successfully parachuted down through Titan's atmosphere in early 2005, all the while transmitting images and data--and scientists were startled by what they saw. One of those researchers was Lorenz, who gives an insider's account of the scientific community's first close encounter with an alien landscape of liquid methane seas and turbulent orange skies. Amid the challenges and frayed nerves, new discoveries are made, including methane monsoons, equatorial sand seas, and Titan's polar hood. Lorenz and Mitton describe Titan as a world strikingly like Earth and tell how Titan may hold clues to the origins of life on our own planet and possibly to its presence on others. Generously illustrated with many stunning images, Titan Unveiled is essential reading for anyone interested in space exploration, planetary science, or astronomy. A new afterword brings readers up to date on Cassini's ongoing exploration of Titan, describing the many new discoveries made since 2006.
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Publisher : PediaPress
Page : 929 pages
File Size : 22,33 MB
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Author : Henning Dypvik
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 47,21 MB
Release : 2013-06-29
Category : Science
ISBN : 3662064235
Despite their global importance, little is known about the few existing examples of impacts into marine environments and icy targets. They are among the least understood and studied parts of impact crater geology. The icy impacts are also of great importance in understanding the developments of the outer planets and their satellites such as Mars or Europa. Furthermore, the impact mechanisms, crater formation and collapse, melt production and the ejecta distribution are scarcely known for impact on targets other than the "classical" solid silicates of the continental crust. The reaction of water and ice to impacts clearly deserves a more thorough study. The understanding of impact effects and consequences in the case of aqueous hits, soft sediments and icy targets has not been thoroughly explored and comprises the main focus of this book. A number of papers in the field of hypervelocity impacts on ice are included. These cover a review of available literature in the field of laboratory studies of such impacts, large impact structures on Titan, predicting impact cratering on a comet nucleus, and a novel report on the survival of bacteria fired at hypervelocity into icy surfaces. This latter paper is concerned with astrobiology and in particular Panspermia (natural migration of life through space).
Author : Michael Marett-Crosby
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 11,9 MB
Release : 2013-06-28
Category : Science
ISBN : 1461468000
"Twenty-Five Astronomical Observations That Changed the World" takes twenty-five journeys through space, back in time and into human history. We begin with the simplest sight of the Tycho Crater on the Moon, through a repeat of Galileo's observations of Jupiter's moons, and then move out towards the nebulae, stars, and galaxies. The astronomical observations repeat the original groundbreaking discoveries that have changed our understanding of science and ourselves. This title contains graded observing challenges from the straightforward to the more difficult (in chapter order). It offers clear observing tips and lots of practical help, presuming no prior in-depth knowledge of equipment. Binoculars and/or a small astronomical telescope are all that is required for most of the observations. Secondly, it explores for each observation the science of what is seen, adding to the knowledge and enjoyment of amateur astronomers and offering lots of reading for the cloudy nights when there is not a star in view. Thirdly, the book puts the amateur astronomers' observations into a wider perspective. "Twenty-Five Astronomical Observations That Changed the World" makes the observer part of that great story of discovery. Each chapter, each observing challenge, shows how to observe and then how to look with understanding. The projects begin with practicalities: where the object is, how best is it observed and with what appropriate equipment (usually a small-to-medium aperture amateur telescope, binoculars, even the naked eye). "Twenty-Five Astronomical Observations that Changed the World" guides even the inexperienced amateur astronomer - beginners can use the book - around a variety of night-sky objects, and reminds the more experienced how they can best be seen. These practical observations put us in contact with all the history and culture surrounding them: through scientific speculation and literature to those first fuzzy images made in 1959 by the Russian space probe Luna 3.
Author : Jackie DiSalvo
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 43,78 MB
Release : 2010-11-23
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0822977001
In a dramatically original analysis, Jackie DiSalvo explores Blake's reworking of Genesis and Paradise Lost in his prophetic poem The Four Zoas, creating a compelling new reading of both Milton and Blake. With informed argument and provocative insights, DiSalvo shows how Blake's view of history prefigures the revaluation of our own myths of origin prompted by new political, psychological, and feminist perspectives.
Author : Valeria Souza
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 11,93 MB
Release : 2020-07-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 3030460878
Astrobiology not only investigates how early life took hold of our planet but also life on other planets – both in our Solar System and beyond – and their potential for habitability. The book take readers from the scars on planetary surfaces made by space rocks to the history of the Solar System narrated by those space rocks as well as exoplanets in other planetary systems. But the true question is how life arose here or elsewhere. Modern comparative genomics has revealed that Darwin was correct; a set of highly conserved genes and cellular functions indicate that all life is related by common ancestry. The Last Universal Common Ancestor or LUCA sits at the base of the Tree of Life. However, once that life took hold, it started to diversify and form complex microbial communities that are known as microbial mats and stromatolites. Due to their long evolutionary history and abundance on modern Earth, research on the biological, chemical and geological processes of stromatolite formation has provided important insights into the field of astrobiology. Many of these microbialite-containing ecosystems have been used as models for astrobiology, and NASA mission analogs including Shark Bay, Pavilion and Kelly Lakes. Modern microbialites represent natural laboratories to study primordial ecosystems and provide proxies for how life could evolve on other planets. However, few viral metagenomic studies (i.e., viromes) have been conducted in microbialites, which are not only an important part of the community but also mirror its biodiversity. This book focuses on particularly interesting sites such as Andean lake microbialites, a proxy of early life since they are characterized by very high UV light, while Alchichica and Bacalar lakes are characterized by high-salt and oligotrophic waters that nurture stromatolites. However, it is only the oasis of Cuatro Ciénegas Basin in México that stored past life in its marine sediments of the Sierra de San Marcos. This particular Sierra has a magmatic pouch that moves the deep aquifer to the surface in a cycle of sun drenched life and back to the depths of the magmatic life in an ancient cycle that now is broken by the overexploitation of the surface water as well as the deep aquifer in order to irrigate alfalfa in the desert. The anthropocene, the era of human folly, is killing this unique time machine and with it the memory of the planet.
Author : Joseph Seckbach
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 38,34 MB
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 9400710038
The year 2003 was the 50th anniversary of the seminal experiment of Stanley Miller. This was a unique opportunity for highlighting the current interest in this most interdisciplinary subject. The leading space agencies: the European Space Agency (ESA) as well as NASA, the American Space Agency, have planned missions that will elucidate some of the still unknown questions underlying research in the origin of life. New results are surpassing our ability to keep well informed: the reviews that we were presented at the Trieste meeting will bring the readers of this well-documented and timely book up to date in this fast-moving area. An important component of the conference was the review of the Cassini-Huygens mission due to arrive in the Saturn system just one year after the conference convened in Trieste. There was particular interest in the status of the experiments that will take place inside the atmosphere of Titan, the large satellite, which is a testing ground for the theories and experiments in the field of chemical evolution. The Jovian system is currently under study with the view of investigating the possibility of life underneath the frozen surface of the Galilean moon Europa; the ESA mission "Mars Express" and Mars Odyssey received special attention. Some of the world leaders in the field gathered in Trieste in September 2003 - that was a most timely date for reviewing recent data and discussing the prospects of future research.
Author : David M. Harland
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 435 pages
File Size : 12,43 MB
Release : 2007-08-19
Category : Science
ISBN : 0387739785
*Brings the story of the Cassini-Huygens mission and their joint exploration of the Saturnian system right up to date. *Combines a review of previous knowledge of Saturn, its rings and moons, including Titan, with new spacecraft results in one handy volume. *Provides the latest and most spectacular images, which will never have appeared before in book form. *Gives a context to enable the reader to more easily appreciate the stream of discoveries that will be made by the Cassini-Huygens mission. *Tells the exciting story of the Huygens spacecraft’s journey to the surface of Titan.
Author : Frances Bartkowski
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 12,88 MB
Release : 2008-09-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0231517637
Since DNA has replaced blood as the medium through which we establish kinship, how do we determine with whom we are kin? Who counts among those we care for? The distinction between these categories is constantly in flux. How do we come to decide those we may kiss and those we may kill? Focusing on narratives of kinship as they are defined in contemporary film, literature, and news media, Frances Bartkowski discusses the impact of "stories of origin" on our regard for nonhuman species. She locates the role of "totems and taboos" in forming and re-forming kinship categories-groupings that enable us to tie the personal to the social-and explores the bestiary, among the oldest of literary forms. The bestiary is the realm in which we allegorize the place of humans and other species, a menagerie encompassing animals we know as well as human-animal chimeras and other beings that challenge the "natural" order of the world. Yet advances in reproductive technologies, the mapping of genomes, and the study of primates continually destabilize these categories and recast the dynamic between the natural and the cultural. Bartkowski highlights the arbitrariness of traditional kinship arrangements and asks us to rethink our notions of empathy and ethics. She shows how current dialogues concerning ethics and desire determine contemporary attitudes toward issues of care, and suggests a new framework for negotiating connection and conflict.
