Critical Acclaim for
PLANETARY DREAMS
The Quest To Discover Life Beyond Earth

"The stunning insights provided in Planetary Dreams make it a book for everyone who has the slightest curiosity about our role in the cosmos."——Hugh Downs, ABC News, 20/20

"The broadest and, in a philosophical sense, the deepest book to examine the question of the origins of life in the universe. . . . A wise, kindly, and beautifully written book, Planetary Dreams sets forth a vision of a truly human and humane future and a hope for a richly inhabited universe."——Ben Bova, six-time Hugo Award winner and past president of the National Space Society

"If you are interested in the search for extraterrestrial life. . .then Planetary Dreams is a must read. Delightfully written."——Louis D. Friedman, Executive Director, The Planetary Society

"Combining many narrative elements, including a description of his fanciful institution, the Museum of the Cosmos, Shapiro’s imaginative, multifaceted work should meet the yearnings of space enthusiasts and of the wider public, as Carl Sagan’s books did."——Booklist

The question of the existence of other worlds and other living beings has been present in the human quest for knowledge since as far as Epicurus. For centuries this question belonged to the fields of philosophy and theology. The theoretical problem of the formation of the Solar System, and hence of other planetary systems, was tackled only during the 18th century, while the first observational attempts for a detection started less than one hundred years ago. Direct observation of an extra-solar planetary system is an extraordinarily difficult problem: extra-solar planets are at huge distances, are incredibly faint and are overwhelmed by the bright light of their own stars. With virtually no observational insight to test their models, theoreticians have remained for decades in a difficult position to make substantial progress. Yet, the field of stellar formation has provided since the 1980s both the the oretical and observational evidences for the formation of discs at the stage of star birth and for debris materials orbiting the very young stellar systems. It was tempting to consider that these left-overs might indeed later agglomerate into planetary systems more or less similar to ours. Then came observational evidences for planets outside the Solar System.

In astrology, each planet in our solar system is symbolically associated with specific archetypes, characteristics, themes and patterns in human experience. The discovery in 2005 of Eris -- a dwarf planet beyond Pluto -- was therefore an event of great significance for astrology as well as astronomy. In this unique book, Keiron Le Grice considers the astrological significance of Eris. How, he asks, can we determine Eris's meaning? What archetypal themes is it associated with? In what ways might the myths of Eris, the Greek goddess of strife, be relevant to the astrological meaning? What can Eris's discovery tell us about the evolutionary challenges we now face? Drawing on a wide variety of perspectives -- including mythology, ecology, religion, history, philosophy and Jungian psychology -- Le Grice carefully constructs a multi-faceted picture of Eris's possible meaning, helping to illuminate the unprecedented events of our time and providing clues to our possible future directions.

Since its first publication more than twenty-five years ago, How to Build a Habitable Planet has established a legendary reputation as an accessible yet scientifically impeccable introduction to the origin and evolution of Earth, from the Big Bang through the rise of human civilization. This classic account of how our habitable planet was assembled from the stuff of stars introduced readers to planetary, Earth, and climate science by way of a fascinating narrative. Now this great book has been made even better. Harvard geochemist Charles Langmuir has worked closely with the original author, Wally Broecker, one of the world's leading Earth scientists, to revise and expand the book for a new generation of readers for whom active planetary stewardship is becoming imperative. Interweaving physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, and biology, this sweeping account tells Earth's complete story, from the synthesis of chemical elements in stars, to the formation of the Solar System, to the evolution of a habitable climate on Earth, to the origin of life and humankind. The book also addresses the search for other habitable worlds in the Milky Way and contemplates whether Earth will remain habitable as our influence on global climate grows. It concludes by considering the ways in which humankind can sustain Earth's habitability and perhaps even participate in further planetary evolution. Like no other book, How to Build a Habitable Planet provides an understanding of Earth in its broadest context, as well as a greater appreciation of its possibly rare ability to sustain life over geologic time. Leading schools that have ordered, recommended for reading, or adopted this book for course use: * Arizona State University * Brooklyn College CUNY * Columbia University * Cornell University * ETH Zurich * Georgia Institute of Technology * Harvard University * Johns Hopkins University * Luther College * Northwestern University * Ohio State University * Oxford Brookes University * Pan American University * Rutgers University * State University of New York at Binghamton * Texas A&M University * Trinity College Dublin * University of Bristol * University of California-Los Angeles * University of Cambridge * University Of Chicago * University of Colorado at Boulder * University of Glasgow * University of Leicester * University of Maine, Farmington * University of Michigan * University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * University of North Georgia * University of Nottingham * University of Oregon * University of Oxford * University of Portsmouth * University of Southampton * University of Ulster * University of Victoria * University of Wyoming * Western Kentucky University * Yale University

From deep ocean trenches and the geographical poles to outer space, organisms can be found living in remarkably extreme conditions. This book provides a captivating account of these systems and their extraordinary inhabitants, 'extremophiles'. A diverse, multidisciplinary group of experts discuss responses and adaptations to change; biodiversity, bioenergetic processes, and biotic and abiotic interactions; polar environments; and life and habitability, including searching for biosignatures in the extraterrestrial environment. The editors emphasize that understanding these systems is important for increasing our knowledge and utilizing their potential, but this remains an understudied area. Given the threat to these environments and their biota caused by climate change and human impact, this timely book also addresses the urgency to document these systems. It will help graduate students and researchers in conservation, marine biology, evolutionary biology, environmental change and astrobiology better understand how life exists in these environments and their susceptibility or resilience to change.

Marvel at the wonders of the Universe, from stars and planets to black holes and nebulae, in this exploration of our Solar System and beyond. Universe opens with a look at astronomy and the history of the Universe, using 3D artworks to provide a comprehensive grounding in the fundamental concepts of astronomy, including the basic techniques of practical astronomy. The core of the book is a tour of the cosmos covering the Solar System, the Milky Way, and galaxies beyond our own. Explanatory pages introduce different celestial phenomena, such as galaxies, and are followed by catalogues that profile the most interesting and important examples. A comprehensive star atlas completes the picture, with entries on each of the 88 constellations and a monthly sky guide showing the night sky as it appears throughout the year as viewed from both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Ce volume contient les revues invitees et les presentations orales du Symposium VAl 181 Sounding Solar and Stellar Interiors, tenu a Nice du 30 septembre au 3 octobre 1996. Les posters presentes a cette conference 1 sont publies dans un volume separe. Depuis Ie lancement avec succes du satellite SoRO Ie 2 Decembre 1995, et apres des annees d'efforts importants dans Ie domaine de l'helio- et l'asterosismologie, il a semble approprie de tenir un symposium dedie aux consequences de la sismologie pour notre connaissance de la structure in- terne du Soleil et des etoiles. Le but etait de presenter a la communaute entiere les nouveaux resultats de l'heliosismologie obtenus aussi bien par les experiences spatiales que par les reseaux exist ants au sol, ainsi que les avancees theoriques dans les domaines de la structure et de la physique de l'interieur solaire. Ce but a ete largement atteint: alors que SoRO ne fournissait des don- nees que depuis environ 6 mois, la qualite des donnees heliosismologiques a ete largement amelioree, de nouvelles techniques ont ete elaborees comme la "telechronosismologie" (nom propose par D. Gough dans sa conclusion pour l'analyse temps-distance), et de nouveaux mecanismes physiques ont ete proposes pour tenter de reduire les differences persist antes entre Ie Soleil observe et les modeles standard.

A total eclipse of the Sun is due in August 1999. It will attract alot of interest because - unusually - it will be visible in much of Europe and the UK. A total Solar Eclipse is always fascinating. This book is for everyone that wants to know 1. What a Solar Eclipse is 2. The phenomena one can expect to see 3. How to photograph an eclipse using a variety of methods 4. How to plan for an eclipse expedition. The book not only covers the 1999 eclipse but also past and future eclipses which we can look forward to. This book is also interesting to "armchair astronomers" as it contains alot of historical and anecdotal information. There's even a final chapter on "Eclipse Mishaps and Oddities" including the American eclipse expedition of 1780 that missed the total eclipse because they went to the wrong location

The Planetary Scientist's Companion is a comprehensive and practical book of facts and data about the Sun, planets, asteroids, comets, meteorites, and Kuiper belt and Centaur objects in our solar system. Also covered are properties of nearby stars, the interstellar medium, and extra-solar planetary systems.

The Quest To Discover Life Beyond Earth.

"The 'dreams' that I write of are not the usual ones, the images that come up in our minds involuntarily during certain stages of sleep, but rather the hopes and expectations that we have lavished upon other worlds around us."—from the Preface.

The surprisingly long history of debate over extraterrestrial life is full of marvelous visions of what life "out there" might be like, as well as remarkable stories of alleged sightings and heated disputes about the probability that life might actually have arisen more than once. In Planetary Dreams, acclaimed author Robert Shapiro explores this rich history of dreams and debates in search of the best current answers to the most elusive and compelling of all questions: Are we alone?

In his pursuit, he presents three contrasting views regarding how life might have started: through Divine Creation, by a highly unlikely stroke of luck, or by the inevitable process of a natural law that he terms the Life Principle. We are treated to a lively fictional dinner debate among the leading proponents of these schools of thought—with the last named group arguing that life has almost surely formed in many places throughout the universe, and the others that life may well be entirely unique to our own blue planet. To set the stage for a deep exploration of the question, the author then leads us on a fantastic journey through the museum of the cosmos, an imagined building that holds models of the universe at different degrees of magnification. We then journey deep into inner space to view the astonishingly intricate life of a single cell, and learn why the origin of such a complex object from simple chemical mixtures poses one of the most profound enigmas known to science.

Writing in a wonderfully entertaining style, Shapiro then reviews the competing theories about the start of life on Earth, and suggests the debate may best be settled by finding signs of life on the other worlds of our solar system. He takes us on a guided tour of the most likely sites, from the underground hot springs of Mars to the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's airless moons.

Along the way, he shares a wealth of fascinating stories about the ways in which our views of the heavens have changed, from the theories of ancient philosphers, who argued that the Moon was inhabited, to the current Origins and Astrobiology initiatives of NASA. He describes the probes that will be sent out in the near future in pursuit of the first compelling physical evidence of life beyond Earth, and concludes with a radical suggestion about how this quest might be supported through the next millennium. As we launch into an exciting new era of space exploration, Planetary Dreams offers a thoughtful and entertaining exploration of both the history of our hopes and expectations and a vision of a possible future in which the discovery of life elsewhere will provide a new view of our place in the universe.

The cover picture of this volume displays one of the most advanced products of he lioseismic research: a view into the deep interior of the sun, revealing its distinctly non-uniform rotation throughout the entire depth of the convection zone. Just over 20 years ago, the first successful helioseismic experiment disclosed an increase of ro tation velocity in the uppermost one dozen megameters below the photosphere. The stunning progress in depth and detail highlighted by the cover diagram (and by others shown in this volume as well) was made possible by considerable advances in instru mentation, by the development of powerful analytical tools and, foremost, by the involvement of new brains of enthusiastic proselytes and newcomers to the field, in creasing nearly exponentially in number every year. New branches of research widened the scope of "uranoseismology", as e. g. time-distance seismology (the promising av enue towards small-scale and short-time variability), atmospheric seismology (a new look at strange phenomena we have all ways seen, but hardly understood), and finally the growing observational assault on hundreds of individual stars which are either manifestly or supposedly oscillating -i. e. asteroseismology. The formation of numer ous solar and stellar observing networks and, ultimately, space missions like SOHO have greatly promoted the potential of this science. This steady progress was accompanied by workshops, colloquia, and symposia in quick succession.

Transient phenomena are short-lived astronomical events, unusual in a science in which time is more often measured in millennia than milliseconds. There is a fascination with transient phenomena, predictable or otherwise, that astronomers of all abilities share. In Meteors, Comets, Supernovae, Neil Bone gives guidelines for observers, including the best possible periods (months or years) to see seasonal but unpredictable phenomena like meteors and sunspots. Recording such outbursts involves visual observing techniques, photography, and even the relatively new field of the video recording of meteors, which are also examined in detail. The book also includes material about phenomena that occur in the lower atmosphere (such as "ozone eaters", nacreous clouds, solar and lunar haloes), which although not strictly astronomical in their nature attract the attention of dedicated sky-watchers.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued a challenge: the United States would land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. It seemed like an impossible task and one that the Russians--who had launched the first satellite and put the first man into Earth orbit--would surely perform before us. The ingenuity, passion, and sacrifice of thousands of ordinary men and women, from all walks of life, enabled the space program to meet this extraordinary goal. In all, six crews would land on the moon before Congress withdrew financial backing for the program. This is the story of those men and women who worked behind the scenes, without fanfare or recognition, to make these missions a success. Thirty years later, they still speak of Apollo with pride, sometimes even awe. After Apollo moonwalker John Young told journalist Billy Watkins in a 1999 interview that "nobody knows anything about the people who helped make those flights so successful," Watkins made it his mission to identify the unsung heroes and learn their stories. His subjects include: BLJulian Scheer (NASA publicist): Argued for and won the inclusion of a television camera on Apollo 11, enabling Armstrong's walk on the moon to be broadcast and recorded for posterity. BLSonny Morea, lead designer of the Lunar Rover. BLHugh Brown, one of the few African Americans who worked on the Apollo program, helped monitor for Russian submarines trying to jam NASA communication during launches, and later went on to become head of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. BLJoAnn Morgan, launch control: One of the few women involved in the space program, Morgan was designated the "lightning specialist." Herknowledge was crucial when the Apollo 12 spacecraft was struck by lightning only seconds after liftoff, nearly causing an abort. She was one of the few specialists allowed in the "firing room" during liftoff. BLJoan Roosa, widow of Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa, talks about the sacrifices of the families and their devotion to "The Program." BLJoe Schmitt, veteran suit technician was responsible for making sure the suits were leak-proof and hooked up correctly--knowing any mistake would mean instant death in space. BLJoseph Laitin, who came up with the idea for the Apollo 8 astronauts to read the first ten verses of Genesis during their Christmas Eve television broadcast from the moon. BLClancy Hatelberg, the Navy diver, who plucked the first humans to walk on the moon from the Pacific Ocean after the Apollo 11 landing.

In the past decade, indirect (Doppler) imaging techniques have opened up a whole new discipline in stellar astronomy, providing increasingly detailed photometric, magnetic, and chemical inhomogeneity images of stellar surfaces. Furthermore, new optical interferometers are already being used with sophisticated interferometer techniques to image stellar surface structures more directly, and in the future the ESO VLT Interferometer and other instruments will extend these capabilities enormously. These developments are highlighted in the first two sections of this book. The large number of recent results, ground-based and space-based, and the lack of a generally accepted dynamo theory with predictive power for the stars and the Sun, result in an ever-growing complexity of interpretation of individual results. The IAU Symposium 176 on Stellar Surface Structure' consequently focused on spatially resolved stellar observations throughout the H-R diagram, from O- and B-stars to late M-stars. Two further sections in this book summarize the current observational data on surface inhomogeneities in stellar photospheres, chromospheres, and coronae. Finally, a special section is devoted to next generation model atmospheres.

On July 16, 1994 a world-shattering event occurred that would rivet our attention for six explosive days and go on to make history as the single most important celestial event of the century. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter, changing forever our understanding of comets and cosmic cataclysms. Our own sense of security would never be the same as the world witnessed fragment after fragment of the comet bash into Jupiter with the collective equivalent force of a 50-million-megaton bomb. David Levy, co-discoverer of periodic Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, shares his once-in-several-lifetimes' story from the time of the discovery, with Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker, of this unusual "squashed" comet to the later shocking revelation of hearing that "their" comet was destined to collide with Jupiter. Never in recorded history has a comet created such a catastrophic event as smashing into a planet. Impact Jupiter takes off where David Levy's earlier acclaimed book, The Quest for Comets, left us. Magnificent photos of the impacts, including superb color pictures, accompany David's poetic words, vividly bringing to life his thrilling story. Savor the words of one of the world's most celebrated amateur astronomers as he humbly and eloquently opens the beauty of the heavens to all who are curious.

This 1986 book presents a series of computer-drawn maps and tables for all total and annular eclipses of the Sun calculated to have been observable in East Asia in the 3400 years from 1500 BC to AD 1900. The study of past eclipses is a useful tool in both geophysics and chronology, for example in determining the long-term behaviour of the Earth's rate of rotation. The eclipses of the Sun that occurred in East Asia - notably in China, Korea and Japan - are particularly useful because numerous reliable written records of them are extant. The book will be of interest to professional astronomers whose work can benefit from long-term historical data, especially those interested in studying the Earth's rotation and to historians of Chinese astronomy. It will be an essential reference work for research libraries.

Mars has always held a special interest because of the possibility that life may have existed there. The story of water on Mars is crucial for understanding the planet's geological, climatological, and biological history. In this book Dr. Carr summarizes the history of water on Mars. He highlights problems confronted, addressing them from the records of the morphology of the surface and the chemistry and mineralogy of some near-surface rocks, as revealed in meteorites originating on Mars. The book is well illustrated with imagery from the Viking missions. The water story has important implications for the future exploration of the planet.

A complete revision of Goody's classic 1964 work, this volume offers a systematic discussion of atmospheric radiation processes that today are at the center of worldwide study and concern. It deals with the ways in which incident solar radiation is transformed into scattered and thermal radiation, and the thermodynamic consequences for the Earth's gaseous envelope, identifying aspects of the interaction between radiation and atmospheric motions as the central theme for atmospheric radiation studies. As a complete treatment of physical and mathematical foundations, the text assumes no prior knowledge of atmospheric physics. The theoretical discussion is systematic, and can therefore be applied with minor extension to any planetary atmosphere.

It is a pleasure to present this work, which has been well received in Gennan-speaking countries through four editions, to the English-speaking reader. We feel that this is a unique publication in that it contains valuable material that cannot easily-if at all-be found elsewhere. We are grateful to the authors for reading through the English version of the text, and for responding promptly (for the most part) to our queries. Several authors have supplied us, on their own initiative or at our suggestion, with revised and updated manuscripts and with supplementary English references. We have striven to achieve a translation of H andbuch flir Sternfreunde which accurately presents the qualitative and quantitative scientific principles con tained within each chapter while maintaining the flavor of the original Ger man text. Where appropriate, we have inserted footnotes to clarify material which may have a different meaning and/or application in English-speaking countries from that in Gennany. When the first English edition of this work, Astronomy: A Handbook (translated by the late A. Beer), appeared in 1975, it contained 21 chapters. This new edition is over twice the length and contains 28 authored chap ters in three volumes. At Springer's request, we have devised a new title, Compendium of Practical Astronomy, to more accurately reflect the broad spectrum of topics and the vast body of infonnation contained within these pages.

This book chronicles the history of climate science and planetary exploration, focusing on our ever-expanding knowledge of Earth's climate, and the parallel research underway on some of our nearest neighbours: Mars, Venus and Titan. From early telescopic observation of clouds and ice caps on planetary bodies in the seventeenth century, to the dawn of the space age and the first robotic planetary explorers, the book presents a comprehensive chronological overview of planetary climate research, right up to the dramatic recent developments in detecting and characterising exoplanets. Meanwhile, the book also documents the discoveries about our own climate on Earth, not only about how it works today, but also how profoundly different it has been in the past. Highly topical and written in an accessible and engaging narrative style, this book provides invaluable historical context for students, researchers, professional scientists, and those with a general interest in planetary climate research.

THE MEETING The IAU Symposium 160 ASTEROIDS COMETS METEORS 1999 has been held at Villa Carlotta in Belgirate, on the shore of Lago Maggiore (Italy), from June 14 to June 18, 1993. It has been organized by the Astronomical Observatory of Torino and by the Lunar and Planetary Institute of Houston. It has been a very large meeting, with 323 registered participants from 38 countries. The scientific program included 29 invited reviews, 106 oral communications, and 215 posters. The subjects covered included all the aspects of the studies of the minor bodies of the solar system, including asteroids, comets, meteors, meteorites, interplanetary dust, with special focus on the interrelationships between these. The meeting was structured as follows. 5 morning plenary sessions have been devoted to invited reviews on: (1) search programs (2) populations of small bodies (3) dynamics (4) physical observations and modelling (5) origin and evolution. Two afternoon plenary sessions have been devoted to space missions to small bodies and to interrelationships between the different populations. The afternoon parallel sessions have been devoted to: dynamics of comets; Toutatis, Ida, Gaspra; physical processes in cometary comae and tails; meteorites; the cosmogonic message from cometary nuclei; physics of asteroids; the interplanetary dust complex; comet nuclei; meteors; composition and material properties of comets; dynamics of asteroids.

The brilliant trailing beauty of fiery comets has inspired fear, wonder, and awe since the dawn of human history. Brighter than stars, moving and disappearing in their own singular orbits, comets have been among the most mysterious elements in the sky, eluding our understanding until very recently. With the aid of space probes, scientists have discovered that these swiftly moving chunks of ice and carbon are more plentiful and far more dangerous than suspected. Scientists are also beginning to realize the monumental role played by comets in the development of the Earth and solar system. David Levy describes in dramatic detail the thrilling yet often devastating effects of comet collisions. In the dawn of our solar system, the Earth was barraged with comets that may have carried the materials necessary to lay the foundations for life on this planet. Levy also presents compelling evidence for later comet collisions, including those of the age of dinosaurs. Great impacts, Levy asserts, not only caused the extinction of the dinesaurs, but ushered in new species of life. As Levy so clearly explains, scientists are realizing that comet collisions are virtually inevitable. Levy reveals possible future collisions with the Earth and describes the terrible risks to life they would pose. He even shows how we might prepare to withstand the impact of large comets in the future.

Meteorites - as well as shooting stars and meteors - result from a collision of a solid body from space with our Earth, but only meteorites are able to penetrate the Earth's protective shield, the atmosphere, and fall to the Earth's surface. Apart from lunar samples, they are the only materials from beyond the Earth which we can probe and study.
This book gives a concise and up-to-date description of meteorites - fall phenomena, chemical and mineral composition, classification - as well as a discussion of their formation and origin, which also tells us the story of the formation of our planetary system. The text is understandable for laymen and students, but can also be used as an introduction to the field for students and scientists.

Infrared Solar Physics contains the proceedings of the 154th Symposium of the International Astronomical Union held in Tucson, Arizona, March 2--5, 1992. Aimed at active workers and graduate students in solar physics, this volume provides the first comprehensive view of a rapidly expanding discipline that gives us a new perspective on the sun. Measurements across the wide infrared spectral range -- here, from 1 mum to 1 mm -- can probe the solar atmosphere from below the visible surface through the outer reaches of the corona. Taking full advantage of revolutionary advances in detector technology, infrared observations from the ground, aircraft and space have led to a better understanding of solar magnetic fields, atmospheric structure and activity, and elemental abundances. The infrared has also provided new interpretive challenges, such as the appearance of the 12-mum emission lines of magnesium. These and other developments are discussed here by the leading contributors to the field, who also give their perspectives on the future of this rich field of study.