Lucent Library of Science and Technology. Comets and Asteroids (2004)(113s)_PPop_.pdf

T HE L UCENT L IBRARY OF S CIENCE AND

S CIENCE AND

T ECHNOLOGY

Comets and

by Don Nardo

San Diego • Detroit • New York • San Francisco • Cleveland • New Haven, Conn. • Waterville, Maine • London • Munich

T HE L UCENT L IBRARY OF

T ECHNOLOGY

Asteroids

Cover: Comet Hyakutake, discovered in 1996, is one of the brightest comets ever discovered, and has a tail

more than 300 million miles long.

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No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by

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tribution or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Nardo, Don, 1947–

Comets and asteroids / by Don Nardo.

v. cm. — (The Lucent library of science and technology)

Includes bibliographical references.

Contents: Comets demystified, asteroids discovered—How asteroids and comets formed—Vital

statistics of asteroids and comets—Voyages to the comets and asteroids—How humans will mine

asteroids and comets—When comets and asteroids strike earth.

ISBN 1-59018-286-3 (hardback : alk. paper)

1. Comets—Juvenile literature. 2. Asteroids—Juvenile literature. [1. Comets. 2. Asteroids.] I.

Title. II. Series.

QB721.5N37 2004

523.6—dc22

2003016736

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Mountains in the Sky

Chapter 1

Comets Demystified, Asteroids Discovered

Chapter 2

How Asteroids and Comets Formed

Chapter 3

Vital Statistics of Asteroids and Comets

Chapter 4

Voyages to the Comets and Asteroids

Chapter 5

How Humans Will Mine Asteroids and Comets

Chapter 6

When Comets and Asteroids Strike Earth

Notes

Glossary

For Further Reading

Major Works Consulted

101

Additional Works Consulted

103

Index

107

Picture Credits

112

About the Author

112

Foreword

“The world has changed far more in the past 100 years

than in any other century in history. The reason is not

political or economic, but technological—technologies

that flowed directly from advances in basic science.”

revolution that British physicist Stephen Hawking

describes in the above quote has transformed virtually

every aspect of human life at an unprecedented pace.

Inventions unimaginable a century ago have not only

become commonplace but are now considered neces-

sities of daily life. As science historian James Burke

writes, “We live surrounded by objects and systems

that we take for granted, but which profoundly affect

the way we behave, think, work, play, and in general

conduct our lives.”

For example, in just one hundred years, transporta-

tion systems have dramatically changed. In 1900 the

first gasoline-powered motorcar had just been intro-

duced, and only 144 miles of U.S. roads were hard-

surfaced. Horse-drawn trolleys still filled the streets of

American cities. The airplane had yet to be invented.

Today 217 million vehicles speed along 4 million miles

of U.S. roads. Humans have flown to the moon and

commercial aircraft are capable of transporting passen-

gers across the Atlantic Ocean in less than three hours.

The transformation of communications has been

just as dramatic. In 1900 most Americans lived and

worked on farms without electricity or mail delivery.

Few people had ever heard a radio or spoken on a tele-

phone. A hundred years later, 98 percent of American

— Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History

of Relativity,” Time, 2000

T he twentieth-century scientific and technological

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