{"product_id":"from-dust-to-life-9780691145228","title":"From Dust to Life","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTells the story of how the celestial objects that make up the solar system arose from common beginnings billions of years ago, and how scientists and philosophers have sought to unravel this mystery down through the centuries, piecing together the clues that enabled them to deduce the solar system's layout, its age, and the likely way it formed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[T]here is much solid information to be gleaned from careful reading.\"--Publishers Weekly \"[A] stellar read.\"--Nature \"In this grand chronicle of the science behind the origins of our 4.6-billion-year-old Solar System, John Chambers and Jacqueline Mitton peruse everything from the giant collision thought to have formed our Moon to the nature of meteorites.\"--Rosalind Metcalfe, Nature \"This is not your average tour of our solar system. Using clear, relatively jargon-free language, Chambers and Mitton provide a comprehensive examination of our current understanding of its formation, which should readily appeal to the general reader who enjoys scientific detail without getting into equations.\"--Library Journal \"I recently built an app about the solar system, and my research would have been made a lot easier if I had possessed a copy of this excellent book. It provides a truly comprehensive overview of our solar system's origins and is written in plain, jargon-free language.\"--Marcus Chown, New Scientist \"Chambers and Mitton stay focused on the science in From Dust to Life: unlike other books that create narratives around the scientists, they discuss the science and the history of its development, rather than the individuals who made it possible. That's a worthwhile trade: while there have been, and are today, interesting people studying the formation of the solar system, the science is even more fascinating as we find out just how complex the process is to turn a cloud of gas and dust into a star and planets.\"--Jeff Foust, Space Review \"[I]ncredibly thorough and detailed, yet very accessible to non-scientists too... [A] compelling overview of the evolution of the Solar System.\"--Katia Moskvitch, BBC Sky at Night \"Read From Dust to Life to gain a fascinating perspective on the current state of the science behind solar system formation.\"--David Dickinson, Astro Guys blog \"This wild ride across the cosmos and through time covers a lot of territory but isn't merely a laundry list of observations. Instead, readers will find one lucid explanation piggybacked onto another... The authors, a planetary scientist and a space science writer, make celestial mechanics comprehensible even to readers with more curiosity than scientific background. Yet there are still insights for those who regularly pore over the astronomy stories in Science News. Best of all, the authors help readers glimpse the why of it all.\"--Science News \"This book ... is accessible to a scientifically literate general reader... The author team is eminently qualified ... one is a well-known planetary scientist and the other an experienced science writer. The result of their efforts is a highly readable book.\"--Star Formation Newsletter \"Chambers and Mitton present a well-researched, detailed, big-picture overview of the solar system that shows how all of people's observations of its contents contribute to a coherent model for its origin. The authors place the modern theory and latest observations in historical context by beginning each chapter with an overview of the development of these scientific ideas from their beginning.\"--Choice \"This book is up-to date, thorough, and authoritative. It revels in the latest discussions and controversies... It is a joy to read and is accessible to any student with a scientific background... Read this book. Join the cosmogonists and help change the cosmogony\/cosmology ratio.\"--David W. Hughes, Observatory \"For the interested amateur with a degree of familiarity with the topics under discussion, From Dust to Life furnishes a comprehensive overview of current models for the formation of the solar system... Genuinely exciting.\"--Cait MacPhee, Times Higher Education\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eList of Illustrations xi  Preface xv  ONE Cosmic Archaeology 1  A fascination with the past 1  A solar system to explain 3  Real worlds 9  Winding back the clock 12  Putting the pieces together 16  TWO Discovering the Solar System 19  Measuring the solar system 19  From wandering gods to geometrical constructions 22  The Sun takes center stage 25  Laws and order 27  Gravity rules 29  The missing planet 31  Asteroids enter the scene 34  Rocks in space 36  Uranus behaving badly 37  Completing the inventory 40  THREE An Evolving Solar System 43  A changing world 43  A nebulous idea begins to take shape 44  The nebular hypothesis in trouble 48  A chance encounter? 50  Nebular theory resurrected 54  FOUR The Question of Timing 56  Reading the cosmic clock 57  Early estimates: ingenious--but wrong 57  Geology versus physics 58  Radioactivity changes everything 61  Hubble and the age of the universe 63  How radioactive timers work 64  Meteorites hold the key 68  Dating the Sun 71  The age of the universe revisited 73  FIVE Meteorites 75  A dramatic entrance 75  Where do meteorites come from? 76  Irons and stones 80  Identifying the parents 83  Lunar and Martian meteorites 86  A rare and precious resource 87  What meteorites can tell us 88  SIX Cosmic Chemistry 92  Element 43: first a puzzle then a clue 92  An abundance of elements 94  The first elements 96  Cooking in the stellar furnace 98  Building heavier elements 104  Supernovae 105  SEVEN A Star Is Born 108  A child of the Milky Way 108  Where stars are born 110  First steps to a solar system 113  The solar system's birth environment 119  Essential ingredients 121  EIGHT Nursery for Planets 123  An excess of infrared 123  Two kinds of disks 125  Inside the solar nebula 129  Getting the dust to stick 131  The influence of gas 134  How to build planetesimals 135  The demise of the disk 137  NINE Worlds of Rock and Metal 140  Sisters but not twins 140  The era of planetesimals 141  Planetary embryos take over 144  The final four 147  Earth 148  Mercury 153  Venus 158  Mars 161  TEN the Making of the Moon 168  The Moon today 169  What the Moon is made of 170  The Moon's orbit 172  The fission theory 174  The capture hypothesis 175  The coaccretion hypothesis 176  The giant impact hypothesis 177  Encounter with Theia 179  Earth, Moon, and tidal forces 181  Late heavy bombardment 183  ELEVEN Earth, Cradle of Life 186  The Hadean era 186  The tree of life 191  The building blocks of life 193  The rise of oxygen 196  A favorable climate 199  Snowball Earth 202  Future habitability 204  TWELVE Worlds of Gas and Ice 205  Giants of the solar system 205  Building giants by core accretion 211  The disk instability model 214  Spin and tilt 215  Masters of many moons 217  Formation of regular satellites 219  The origin of irregular satellites 220  Rings 221  THIRTEEN What Happened to the Asteroid Belt? 225  The asteroid belt today 225  Ground down by collisions? 226  Emptied by gravity? 229  Asteroid families 231  The missing mantle problem 233  Asteroids revealed as worlds 236  FOURTEEN The Outermost Solar System 242  Where do comets come from? 242  Centaurs 246  Looking beyond Neptune 247  The Kuiper belt 248  Sedna 251  The nature of trans-Neptunian  objects 252  Where have all the Plutos gone? 256  The Nice model 259  FIFTEEN Epilogue: Paradigms, Problems, and Predictions 263  The paradigm: solar system evolution in a nutshell 264  Unsolved puzzles 267  Searching the solar system for answers 268  Other planetary systems 271  Future evolution of the solar system 273  Glossary 277  Sources and Further Reading 291  Index 293","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403774107991,"sku":"9780691145228","price":25.2,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780691145228.jpg?v=1730484502","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/from-dust-to-life-9780691145228","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}