Comments on: Book review – Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth

By: Book review – A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 13:04:43 +0000

[…] First up is the role of chance in the external world, which, surprisingly, least impressed me. Carroll gives a long and lively description of the immediate and long-term impacts of the asteroid that did the dinosaurs in. So far, so familiar. But what about the role of chance? Carroll is brief: impacts this big are rare and the Yucatán Peninsula was a bad spot, rich in hydrocarbons and sulfur that were thrown into the atmosphere. What struck me as odd was his assertion that the asteroid would have harmlessly splashed into the ocean had it been off by 30 minutes, thanks to Earth’s rotation. Given Earth also orbits the Sun, would that not have resulted in a near-miss? He omits any mention of the cataloguing of near-Earth objects and what we have since learned about the risk of cosmic collisions. […]

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By: Book review – Terrestrial Impact Structures: The TanDEM-X Atlas (2-Volume Set) | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 19:57:00 +0000

[…] to famous impact structures such as Meteor Crater or Chicxulub, there are those treated in e.g. Springer’s Impact Studies series; […]

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By: Book review – A Polar Affair: Antarctica’s Forgotten Hero and the Secret Love Lives of Penguins | The Inquisitive Biologist

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 13:13:00 +0000

[…] attention to the search for near-earth objects, covering similar ground to the recently reviewed Fire in the Sky, including the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, a visit to the same Catalina Sky Survey, and an interview […]

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By: Book review – End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World | The Inquisitive Biologist

Sat, 30 May 2020 16:13:29 +0000

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By: Book review – End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World | The Inquisitive Biologist

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 14:17:47 +0000

[…] attention to the search for near-earth objects, covering similar ground to the recently reviewed Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth, including the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, a visit to the same Catalina Sky Survey, and an interview […]

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By: Book review – Cosmic Impact: Understanding the Threat to Earth from Asteroids and Comets | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 17:16:10 +0000

[…] Especially the topic of planetary defence has tickled the imagination with a host of books on it in recent years, such as Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us and The Asteroid Threat: Defending Our Planet from Deadly Near-Earth Objects. And Cosmic Impact is not the final word on the topic, see also my review of Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth. […]

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