Scientific Debates in Space Science: Discoveries in the Early Space Era

ISBN-13: 9783031415975 / Angielski

Warren David Cummings; Louis J. Lanzerotti

Spis treści

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Solar Wind or Solar Breeze?

Chapter 3 Open versus Closed Magnetosphere

Chapter 4 Influx of Small Comets into Earth’s Atmosphere

Chapter 5 Origin of the Moon

Chapter 6 Lunar Dust

Chapter 7 Did the Chicxulub Impact Cause the Cretaceous Extinctions?

Chapter 8 Size of the Solar System

Chapter 9 Sources of Gamma-Ray Bursts

Chapter 10 Reflections on Space Science Research

Name Index

Subject Index

O autorze

Warren David Cummings was the first PhD to graduate from the Space Science Department of Rice University. He then joined the faculty of the Department of Planetary and Space Science at UCLA. Dr. Cummings later served as Head of the Department of Physics at Grambling State

University before becoming the Executive Director of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). He served in this latter capacity for 31 years. He is the author of books on the history of theories of the origins of Earth’s moon and of the history of USRA.

Louis J. Lanzerotti is a Distinguished Research Professor of Physics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is retired from Alcatel Lucent Bell Laboratories. He has had a long career in space research, both ground-based and satellite-based, and has one co-authored and five coedited

volumes.

Blurb

This book features several of the significant scientific debates and controversies that helped develop space science in the early space era. The debates led to significant new understandings of the constituents and processes occurring beyond Earth’s atmosphere, and often opened new research directions. Scientific speculations with their resultant debates have played an important role in the development and furthering of research in general. The book thus has broad intellectual importance in illustrating how science advances.

The book includes debates in the subject areas of heliophysics (physics in the cosmic region that covers particles and magnetic fields flowing from the Sun), Earth’s moon, solar system asteroids and comets, and the origin of cosmic gamma-ray bursts. A final chapter describes two important and surprising early scientific discoveries that involved no debates.  

The target audience for this book includes (a) active and retired space scientists, (b) space enthusiasts, and (c) students as supplemental (or even prime) reading in an introductory astronomy and/or space science course. The topics of the debates and controversies, their resolutions, and their pointing to further research and understanding of nature are of both historical and contemporary interest, appeal, and value.