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. * As recently as 2013, an asteroid
plunged into the atmosphere above Chelyabinsk, Russia, detonated
with the force of thirty Hiroshimas, and damaged 7,000 buildings. *
Dillow has gone behind the scenes at NASA, FEMA, and other defense
agencies around the world to discover what measures are being taken
to protect against asteroids and comets.
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