The Galaxy and the Solar System

by John N. Bahcall

Book Overview

"An informative and well-balanced collection of articles by many authors, these ideas are clearly set out, and explored in some detail. . . . An excellent and readable source book."-- Endeavour "It is an excellent, well-organized textbook."-- Science Books and Films

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816509824
• ISBN13: 9780816509829
• Release Date: December 1986
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Length: 483 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

mass extinctions by asteriod collisions

From the standpoint of astronomy in the mid 80s, here is a description of the Milky Way and our solar system. The most interesting chapter might be that on mass extinctions on Earth, and how this might correlate with periodicities of large body impacts. The evidence is surveyed. Both in the geology and astronomy. The geology looks at data like impact craters on Earth from 5 to 250 Myr, citing the seminal work by Alvarez and Muller. When this book was published, a consensus started to gell around the cause of the dinosaur killer being an asteriod collision. Another chapter delves into the possibility of the Sun having a companion star, and how this might have affected the evolution of the solar system. In the years since this book came out, this appears to have been a dead end in speculation.