A History of Modern Planetary Physics 3 Volume Hardback set
A History of Modern Planetary Physics 3 Volume Hardback set
Out of Print
Where did we come from? Before there was life there had to be something to live on - a planet, a solar system. During the past 200 years, astronomers and geologists have developed and tested several different theories about the origin of the solar system and the nature of the Earth. Did the Earth and other planets form as a byproduct of a natural process that formed the Sun? Did the solar system come into being as the result of a catastrophic encounter of two stars? Together, the three volumes that make up A History of Modern Planetary Physics present a survey of these theories.
Nebulous Earth follows the development of Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis, its connection with ideas about the interior of the Earth, and its role in the establishment of the 'evolutionary' worldview that dominated science in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Brush also explores Saturn's rings, Poincaré's contributions to ideas about cosmic evolution, the use of seismology to probe the Earth's core, and explanations of the Earth's magnetic field.
- No other book covers theories about the origin of the solar system as comprehensively
- Writing is accessible to non-specialist readers
- Includes the results of the space program and the recent changes in the ideas about the origin of the Moon
Reviews & endorsements
"...a major work, large in scope and splendid in execution....This will be a standard work for a long time to come." Curtis Wilson, Physics Today
"The book is replete with references and personal accounts from more recent workers....This major work of reference should be in all university and public libraries, as well as in departmental science libraries. It will remain an important document as long as planetary science is practiced." Stuart Ross Taylor, Nature
Product details
August 1997Multiple copy pack
9780521552158
324 pages
243 × 162 × 56 mm
1.768kg
11 b/w illus.
Unavailable - out of print August 2007
Table of Contents
- Part I. Nebular Birth and Heat Death:
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The founders: Laplace and Herschel
- 3. Followers and critics
- 4. The Nebular Hypothesis and the evolutionary worldview
- 5. Thermodynamics and the cooling earth
- 6. Saturn's rings
- 7. Revisions of the Nebular Hypothesis 1860-1885
- 8. Poincaré and cosmic evolution
- 9. The Nebular Hypothesis in the 20th Century
- Part II. Inside the Earth:
- 10. Introduction
- 11. 19th Century debates: solid, liquid, or gas?
- 12. Discovery of the core
- 13. Chemical history of the core
- 14. Theories of geomagnetic secular variation.
