When you look into space, you gaze upon the abyss of time—and time is something that I and my geological companions felt we understood…And yet that night sky above us was older than everything, taking us almost as far back as the origin of the universe, 13.5 billion years ago.”
Astronomy, biology, history, physics, chemistry and of course, geology, are just a few realms uncovered in the latest book by geologist Dr Ted Nield, Incoming!. I have to admit, the text on the book’s jacket did set off my “is this another over-the-top popular science book telling us what we already know?” alarms. It was littered with commendations from fellow scientists, as well as possibly over-zealous claims of “astonishing new research”.
To suggest that the asteroid bombardment 470 million years ago resulted in such an ecological disturbance, that it actually increased biological diversity, great! Something many people outside academia aren’t aware of. But to claim that this is “astonishing new research” is taking it a bit far .
A book detailing this biodiversity increase was published in 2004 and the idea that meteorites can drive evolution has made popular science books before. Admittedly, after the onslaught of disaster movies in the last years, the public can be forgiven for thinking that asteroids (rocky space junk that orbits the Sun and is too small to be considered planets) and meteorites (same rocky space junk, only they survive the entry into Earth’s atmosphere) only cause death and destruction.
Fortunately, the charm, mystery and passion evident in Nield’s writing from the first page quickly eased any of my previous concerns. A book that could be a drab account of dry geological theory with a few examples thrown-in, instead reads like a detective story crossed with an adventure film (there’s a reference to the walls of Mordor on the third page!). Not just of the science behind meteorites and their role in shaping life on this planet is raised, but a colourful account of legends, historical figures, explorers and everyday people involved:
On 30 November, 1954 a meteorite weighing almost 4kg crashed through the roof of a timber frame house on Oden’s Mill Road, Sylacauga, Alabama, demolishing a radio and hitting a plump housewife by the name of Ann Hodges as she took a nap on her couch…”
Nield is unafraid to bite off big chunks of what could be dense science…
As Earth turns its daily eastward rotation, our first hours of darkness are spent sheltering in the lee of the planet as it orbits the Sun. However towards dawn … the sky above is facing into the path of all those tiny specks of space grit, which now hit the atmosphere with the planet’s forward velocity (about 29.79 kilometers per second) added to their own.”
… and make it accessible…
Past midnight, the firmament catches more flies on its windshield.”
It is hard to do justice to the sheer range of information presented in this book. More impressive is the fact that it doesn’t read as a textbook, as some books of this genre do. Yes there are dates and scientific concepts, but they are so neatly laid out—as well as frank accounts of the ‘messiness’ of research and scientific conflicts between the great and the good—that I easily flicked from page to page.
Moving from the largest meteorite ever discovered (‘Hoba’ found in Namibia in 1920, weighing 60 tonnes) to discussions of the ‘peculiar affection that specialists feel for their preferred groups of beasts’ and how the Deccan Traps in India (massive lava outpourings) sent the dinosaurs teetering several hundred thousand years before ‘the’ impact, to poetry, President Ronald Reagan, Arthur C. Clarke, and Bruce Willis. Ted Nield manages what few even attempt.
An accessible journey into and beyond the world of meteorites explaining that in the unlikely event that a meteorite should crash into Earth and wipe out humanity, we should remember that without them we probably wouldn’t have been here in the first place.
If you’re interested in more about meteorites and Dr Nield’s work, Beki Hill recently interviewed him for Elements.
Thumbnail image: A meteor during the peak of the 2009 Leonid Meteor Shower, shared by Navicore on Wikimedia Commons.
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