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Books > Science & Mathematics > Astronomy, space & time > Solar system
The origin and evolution of interplanetary dust have been extensively discussed ever since the 1960s when a series of meetings began which brought together the interplanetary dust community. More recently, during the 1980s, new knowledge has emerged from comprehensive studies of cometary flybys and from infrared space observations. At present new, in-situ explorations of interplanetary dust are providing some promising results. This work begins with investigations of interplanetary dust by space and Earth environment studies, by physics and chemical analysis, and by zodiacal light and optical studies. Topics related to cometary dust, meteoroids and meteor streams, and circumplanetary dust, which are indeed linked to the evolution of interplanetary dust, are then presented. Finally, the origin of interplanetary dust is tracked back to comets or asteroids and to interstellar or circumstellar dust. A summary demonstrates that interplanetary dust studies are thriving and may provide a clearer understadnign of the formation of the solar system.
Titan: Exploring an Earthlike World presents the only comprehensive description in book form of what is currently known about Titan, the largest satellite of the planet Saturn and arguably the most intriguing and mysterious world in the Solar System. Because of its resemblance to our own planet, Titan is often described as a "frozen primitive Earth" and is therefore of wide interest to scientists and educated laypersons from a wide range of backgrounds. The book aims to cater to all of these by using nontechnical language wherever possible, while maintaining a high standard of scientific rigor. The book is a fully revised and extensively updated edition of Titan: The Earthlike Moon, which was published in 1999, before the Cassini and Huygens missions arrived to orbit Saturn and land on Titan. As investigators on these missions, the authors use the latest results to present the most recent revelations and latest surprises about an exciting new world.
Cosmochemistry is a rapidly evolving field of planetary science and the second edition of this classic text reflects the exciting discoveries made over the past decade from new spacecraft missions. Topics covered include the synthesis of elements in stars, behaviour of elements and isotopes in the early solar nebula and planetary bodies, and compositions of extra-terrestrial materials. Radioisotope chronology of the early Solar System is also discussed, as well as geochemical exploration of planets by spacecraft, and cosmochemical constraints on the formation of solar systems. Thoroughly updated throughout, this new edition features significantly expanded coverage of chemical fractionation and isotopic analyses; focus boxes covering basic definitions and essential background material on mineralogy, organic chemistry and quantitative topics; and a comprehensive glossary. An appendix of analytical techniques and end-of-chapter review questions, with solutions available at www.cambridge.org/cosmochemistry2e, also contribute to making this the ideal teaching resource for courses on the Solar System's composition as well as a valuable reference for early career researchers.
Moons come, quite literally, in all shapes and sizes. Our Moon is just one of more than 200 moons in the Solar System that we've identified so far. Scientists have discovered moons made of rock, others of ice. There are moons with atmospheres or with oceans hidden beneath their surfaces, and even some with active volcanoes. Others could perhaps be suitable for life! Astronomer Anna Gammon-Ross of Royal Observatory Greenwich travels through the Solar System, hopping from one moon to the next, to discover not only what these natural satellites have in common, but also what makes each one unique. Learn about the moons that can be found in and around Saturn's rings (and the many others we suspect there could be), the objects orbiting the distant dwarf planets and the curious theory of moon-moons.
This book presents the latest knowledge of the newly discovered Earth-like exoplanets and reviews improvements in both radio and optical SETI. A key aim is to stimulate fresh discussion on algorithms that will be of high value in this extremely complicated search. Exoplanets resembling Earth could well be able to sustain life and support the evolution of technological civilizations, but to date, all searches for such life forms have proved fruitless. The failings of SETI observations are well recognized, and a new search approach is necessary. In this book, different detection algorithms that exploit state-of-the-art, low-cost, and extremely fast multiprocessors are examined and compared. Novel methods such as the agnostic entropy and high-sensitivity blind signal extraction algorithms should represent a quantum leap forward in SETI. The book is of interest to all researchers in the field and hopefully stimulates significant progress in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
There are several textbooks available on solar astronomy which deal with advanced astrophysical aspects of solar physics, and books which provide very elementary knowledge about the Sun. This book will help to bridge the gap. It aims to stimulate interest in solar astronomy, presenting at one place the basic methods and techniques used in the field, together with the latest findings and the excitement in solar physics. As solar astronomy is becoming very popular among amateur astronomers and laymen, the book provides the practical knowledge to build simple solar telescopes and other equipment for making solar observations. Amateur astronomers have made important contributions to solar astronomy, and this book will help to guide them in their endeavours. The book can also serve as a text for undergraduate and graduate students starting out on solar physics. Using it, graduate students can easily embark on specific topics of research in solar astronomy.
The scope of this book is two-fold: the first part gives a fully detailed and pedagogical presentation of the Hawking effect and its physical implications, and the second discusses the backreaction problem, especially in connection with exactly solvable semiclassical models that describe analytically the black hole evaporation process. The book aims to establish a link between the general relativistic viewpoint on black hole evaporation and the new CFT-type approaches to the subject. The detailed discussion on backreaction effects is also extremely valuable.
The topics covered in this book include: Theory of Scattering and Scintillation, Distribution of Scattering Material, Intra-day Variability, Pulsars and their Magnetospheric Structure, Polarization of AGN, Interplanetary Scintillation, and Future Highly-Sensitive Radio Telescopes. The introductory papers emphasize the essential properties of diffractive and refractive scattering, how they differ in temporal and frequency structure, and what they reveal about irregularities in the ISM. Pulsars can be examined in a number of different ways as a function of frequency: time variability (both short and long term), DM changes, pulse broadening, angular extent, and Faraday rotation. Intra-day variable sources (IDVs) are another major topic of the book. Although many variable sources clearly exhibit intrinsic changes, IDVs are generally believed to result from scintillation effects. They require source sizes on the ten micro-arcsec scale, the most extreme cases having profound implications for source lifetimes and emission mechanisms. Finally, a dozen contributions describe future large radio telescope projects, especially the Chinese FAST effort to build a 500 m spherical reflector of innovative design.
Over the last decade the physics of black holes has been revolutionized by developments that grew out of Jacob Bekenstein's realization that black holes have entropy. Stephen Hawking raised profound issues concerning the loss of information in black hole evaporation and the consistency of quantum mechanics in a world with gravity. For two decades these questions puzzled theoretical physicists and eventually led to a revolution in the way we think about space, time, matter and information. This revolution has culminated in a remarkable principle called "The Holographic Principle", which is now a major focus of attention in gravitational research, quantum field theory and elementary particle physics. Leonard Susskind, one of the co-inventors of the Holographic Principle as well as one of the founders of String theory, develops and explains these concepts.
What is Mars? From the ancients to the present, we have imagined Mars repeatedly and studied it longingly. As scientific knowledge of Mars has changed, so has the cultural imagination of this celestial neighbors. The earth-centered beginnings of astronomy connected the blood-red planet with the God of War. The Copernican Revolution and a later, simple mistranslation from Italian supported fantastic visions of distant Mars as the abode of life variously bizarre, ideal, or malignant. In the work of H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, in books, films, radio, and television, Mars reflected not only eternal hopes and fears but then-current political realities. In recent years, "NASA-fication" has brought Mars home, imagining the Red Planet almost as an eighth continent of Earth, a candidate for exploration and exploitation both in fiction and in fact. Rabkin weaves a chronological tale of many threads, including mythology, astrology, astronomy, literary criticism, and cultural studies. More than 60 brief chapters focus on people, events, or phenomena concerning the eternal object of curiosity, Mars. This rich series of readable, illustrated chapters can be sampled at will for the fun of discovery, read sequentially as a connected history, or enjoyed as a resource for the contemplation. Featuring over 100 illustrations, this unique examination of humanity's most storied companion serves as a resource for the study of ourselves.
This book takes an excursion through solar science, science history, and geoclimate with a husband and wife team who revealed some of our sun's most stubborn secrets. E Walter and Annie S D Maunder's work helped in understanding our sun's chemical, electromagnetic and plasma properties. They knew the sun's sunspot migration patterns and its variable, climate-affecting, inactive and active states in short and long time frames. An inactive solar period starting in the mid-seventeenth century lasted approximately seventy years, one that E Walter Maunder worked hard to make us understand: the Maunder Minimum of c 1620-1720 (which was posthumously named for him). With ongoing concern over global warming, and the continuing failure to identify root causes driving earth's climatic changes, the Maunders' story outlines how our cyclical sun can alter climate. The book goes on to view the sun-earth connection in terms of geomagnetic variation and climatic change; contemporary views on the sun's operating mechanisms are explored, and the effects these have on the earth over long and short time scales are pondered. If not a call to widen earth's climate research to include the sun, this book strives to illustrate how solar causes and effects can influence earth's climate in ways we must understand in order to enhance solar system research and our well-being.
This special issue of Space Science Reviews contains selected papers on electromagnetic man-made and natural environmental interactions. Originally these papers were pre sented at the Fifth International Wrocfaw Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility. Wroclaw (Poland), 17-19 September, 1980, a biennial gathering of scientists and engineers. At that time, the symposium organizers selected a few persons of recognized authority and invited them to organize special sessions. Session organizers were given a free hand in the choice of topics and speakers. As a result, several impressive papers originated and a number of interesting people came to Wroclaw to discuss the recent results of their research. Professor Hiroshi Kikuchi from the Nihon University (J apan) was among them, serving as one of the most effective invited session chairmen/organizers at the symposium. The papers presented here were read at Prof. Kikuchi's session. At the symposium they received considerable attention not only because of the fascinating personalities and temperaments of the authors, but mainly because of the timeliness and soundness of their content. Their topic links both scientific and engineering fields in making attempts to resolve these kinds of specific hybrid problems. The problems discussed appear to be of interest not only to the EMC* community but also to a broader forum of persons interested in the areas of electrical and space science, and engineering in general. This opinion was confirmed during the URSI** symposium in Washington, D. C."
These are the Proceedings of the Yohkoh 10th Anniversary Meeting, a COSPAR Colloquium held in Kona, Hawaii, USA, on January 20-24, 2002. The title of the meeting was Multi-Wavelength Observations of Coronal Structure and Dynamics. In these proceedings the many and varied advances of the dynamics solar atmosphere in the past ten years of observations by Yohkoh have been reviewed.
In September 2011, the GRAIL mission launched two unmanned spacecraft to the Moon, which entered into lunar orbit on December 31, 2011 and January 1, 2012. They orbited the Moon until December 17, 2012, when they impacted the surface near the Moon's north pole. This book contains three review articles co-authored by the GRAIL Science Team and Guest Scientists that describe the reasons for the GRAIL mission, the development of the necessary technology, and the design of the mission to acquire the most precise measurements of the lunar gravity field possible today. The book provides a detailed description of the GRAIL mission's scientific objectives, the instrumentation and its required performance, the complex simulation of the measurement system for determining the gravity field, and the innovative education and public outreach of the mission directed toward middle-school students who could select areas of the Moon for imaging with the onboard MoonKam camera system. This volume is aimed at researchers and graduate students active in solar system science and planetology. Originally published in Space Science Reviews journal, Vol. 178/1, 2013.
The papers in this volume cover a large range of questions concerning the dynamics of objects of the solar system, from theoretical Hamiltonian mechanics to the study of the dynamical behaviour of specific objects, with a strong emphasis on the detection, causes and effects of chaotic behaviour. Several papers describe contributions in two topics which are considered as a major breakthrough in numerical dynamics: symplectic methods of numerical integration of Hamiltonian systems, and methods for spectral analysis of numerically computed orbits leading to refined tools for the detection and evaluation of chaos. The dynamics of the asteroid belt and other small objects, a fast-moving topic with important implications for the origin and evolution of the Solar System, is also extensively covered.
The eleventh COSPAR colloquium The Outer Heliosphere: The Next
Frontiers was held in Potsdam, Germany, from 24-28 July, 2000, and
is the second dedicated to this subject after the first one held in
Warsaw, Poland in 1989.
Is SETI a genuine scientific research programme? The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been given fresh impetus in the last years of the 20th century following developments in space science which go beyond speculation. The evidence that many stars are accompanied by planets, the detection of organic material in the circumstellar discs of which planets are created, and claims regarding microfossils on martian meteorites have all led to many new empirical searches. Against the background of these dramatic new developments in science, David Lamb evaluates claims to the contrary, and examines recent attempts to establish contact with other intelligent life forms. He also assesses competing theories on the origin of life on earth, discoveries of former solar planets, proposals for space colonies and the consequent technical and ethical issues. Most importantly he considers the benefits and drawbacks of communication with new life forms - how we should communicate and whether we actually can.
Written in a clear, friendly style, this is a truly revolutionary book about the weirdly beautiful patterns and harmonies woven around Earth by our nearest planetary neighbour, Venus.
The origin of the solar system has been a matter of speculation for
many centuries, and since the time of Newton it has been possible
to apply scientific principles to the problem. A succession of
theories, starting with that of Pierre Laplace in 1796, has gained
general acceptance, only to fall from favor due to its
contradiction in some basic scientific principle or new heavenly
observation. Modern observations by spacecraft of the solar system,
the stars, and extra-solar planetary systems continuously provide
new information that may be helpful in finding a plausible theory
as well as present new constraints for any such theory to satisfy.
The book covers intimately all the topics necessary for the development of a robust magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) code within the framework of the cell-centered finite volume method (FVM) and its applications in space weather study. First, it presents a brief review of existing MHD models in studying solar corona and the heliosphere. Then it introduces the cell-centered FVM in three-dimensional computational domain. Finally, the book presents some applications of FVM to the MHD codes on spherical coordinates in various research fields of space weather, focusing on the development of the 3D Solar-InterPlanetary space-time Conservation Element and Solution Element (SIP-CESE) MHD model and its applications to space weather studies in various aspects. The book is written for senior undergraduates, graduate students, lecturers, engineers and researchers in solar-terrestrial physics, space weather theory, modeling, and prediction, computational fluid dynamics, and MHD simulations. It helps readers to fully understand and implement a robust and versatile MHD code based on the cell-centered FVM.
Since the earliest times one of the brightest lights in the heavens has been that of Jupiter, mythical king of the gods and the largest planet in the solar system. It was only natural that peoples from the dawn of history would be interested in such a planet and, indeed, Jupiter was one of the first objects to be observed with the telescope. Even today Jupiter captures the public interest like no other planet: a vast gaseous world, home to violent storms (larger than the Earth) that have raged for centuries. Galileo's Planet: Observing Jupiter before Photography presents the history of humankind's quest to understand the giant planet in the era before photography, a time when the only way to observe the universe was with the human eye. The book provides a comprehensive and fascinating account of the people involved in this quest, their observations, and the results of their findings. Many of the planetary features studied in detail by today's space probes were once glimpsed by keen-eyed, amateur astronomers. These Earth-bound explorers made up for their modest instruments and viewing conditions with their patience, perseverance, and passion for the night sky. Their greatest challenge was the fifth planet from the Sun and the search for its imagined surface-a revelation of the "real Jupiter." In the process, these part-time observers redefined the meaning of the word "planet." The book recounts their story from the earliest times right up until the invention of the camera.
This text expounds in a logical and scientific manner the idea that life did not originate on earth, but was added to it from the comets. When Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe first made this proposal in the 1970s, they had few takers - because the theory flew in the face of established beliefs. This text argues that in recent years, evidence to support this theory has accumulated from many different directions and grown to the point of being compelling. This work should be of value to readers interested in general science, the origin of man and the meaning of life.
The majority of this volume is devoted to the subject of high energy radiation from galactic and extragalactic black holes. The volume also covers future space missions to primitive bodies and fine structures in the middle atmosphere and their origin. In total, 27 papers are presented, the final two included in the appendix emanating from the previous COSPAR meeting in Washington.
The Physics of Solar and Stellar Coronae provides the first comprehensive summary of the physical processes and phenomena occurring in solar and stellar coronae as observed at X-ray and other wavelengths. The book provides an early summary of the spectacular new solar X-ray observations being obtained with the Yohkoh satellite that are dramatically changing our understanding of the dynamics of the solar corona. With the perspective of two years' observations at X-ray and extreme ultraviolet wavelengths by the ROSAT satellite, many authors present new insights into the basic physical processes occurring in the coronae of stars across the Hertzsprung--Russell Diagram including both pre-main sequence and post-main sequence stars. Detailed models for the hot plasmas typically contained in magnetic loops in both stellar and solar coronae are presented to explain X-ray data obtained with the earlier X-ray instruments on Skylab, SMM, Einstein, and EXOSAT. The book includes papers on coronal observations obtained at other wavelengths and papers of the history of Palermo Astronomical Observatory. The Physics of Solar and Stellar Coronae is intended for researchers in the fields of solar physics and stellar astrophysics and will be a useful resource book for graduate level astrophysics courses. (ABSTRACT) This is the first comprehensive summary of the physical processes and phenomena occurring in solar and stellar coronae. Spectacular new solar X-ray observations by the Yohkoh satellite and stellar observations by ROSAT are highlighted, together with theoretical papers and detailed analyses of earlier data from Skylab, SMM, Einstein, and EXOSAT. Included are papers on coronal observations at other wavelengths and on the history of Palermo Astronomical Observatory.
The 157th IAU Symposium "The Cosmic Dynamo" was entirely dedicated to dynamo processes, which are fundamental to all cosmic scales. Dynamo theory concerns one of the few truly key questions of recent cosmic physics. A complicated interplay of rotation, magnetism and turbulence determines stellar and galactic activity for almost all the short and medium time scales. Behind these multiform phenomena, the cosmic dynamo works in various guises, all involving inductive and dissipative equilibria in rotating turbulent cosmic plasmas. This book presents an up-to-date survey on investigations and results of dynamo theory and related observations. It is intended for graduate scientists working in the field of cosmical magnetism and its related problems, especially convection, turbulence and, more generally, nonlinear physics. |
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