Killer Rocks from Outer Space: Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors
Despite the sensationalistic title, a serious, well-researched overview of the history and current state of cosmic impact science.
I've always said -– and as far as I'm aware, no one has ever said this before -– you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. After all, a book is the work of its author, whereas the idea for the cover most likely originated in the publisher's marketing department.
The cover of Steven N. Koppes' Killer Rocks is an endearingly schlocky example of marketing at its least subtle. An orange-yellow comet hangs like a burning ball of death over the words of the book's title, which recede into the middle distance in the style of the introductory text from Star Wars. Crack the spine, however, and you will discover a very serious, throroughly researched account -– at times poetic, but never sensationalistic -– of cosmic impact science.
The book begins on July 15, 1994, the day the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 -– "twenty-one large lumps of dusty ice," in Koppes' description–smashed into Jupiter. While there is nothing to kill on Jupiter (that we know of anyway), the situation would be very different on Earth, hence the book's title (which apparently was not the author's choice either). A comet the size of SL9 "would destroy civilization," Koppes writes matter-of-factly. "The odds are against any large cosmic objects smacking into Earth anytime soon. Still, it has happened many times before. It might not happen for a million years. It might happen tomorrow."
Next, Koppes gives an overview of impact science history, starting with an engaging description of Arizona's Meteor Crater as "a giant bullet hole." Looking at the photograph of the massive crater on the page opposite, it's difficult to imagine a time when scientists did not accept the existence of meteorites. In fact, as Koppes explains, opinion varied wildly through the centuries: in Roman times, for example, Pliny the Elder believed that rocks could fall from the sky–but he also thought fossils, flesh, blood, and bricks could too.
In later chapters, Koppes details the awesomely destructive power of cosmic bombs. According to one theory,which remains controversial, he points out the dinosaurs were one casualty, when 65 million years ago an asteroid hit, generating a cloud of dust that was so huge, it altered the earth's climate. Some scientists suspect that a cosmic impact also caused an earlier mass extinction 250 million years ago, when nine of every ten species on the planet were wiped out.
The book ends with a discussion of what we earthlings could do if threatened by a cosmic impact. It's an interesting quandary, since the theoretical potential for mass destruction is undeniable–and yet, Koppes points out, no human has ever been killed by a meteorite, as far as historians and scientists know.
Koppes has spent most of his career as a science writer at major research universities: first Arizona State, then the University of Georgia, currently the University of Chicago. Perhaps because he is in daily contact with working scientists, Koppes -– unlike many writers of nonfiction for children -– doesn't write about his subject as if all of the facts in it were god-ordained. He doesn't gloss over the fact that science is an ever-changing discipline, and that what experts believe today might turn out to be just as ludicrous as what Pliny the Elder once believed.
