Shoemaker by Levy - The Man Who Made an Impact

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Princeton University Press, 2002 M11 24 - 320 páginas

It was a lucky twist of fate when in the early1980s David Levy, a writer and amateur astronomer, joined up with the famous scientist Eugene Shoemaker and his wife, Carolyn, to search for comets from an observation post on Palomar Mountain in Southern California. Their collaboration would lead to the 1993 discovery of the most remarkable comet ever recorded, Shoemaker-Levy 9, with its several nuclei, five tails, and two sheets of debris spread out in its orbit plane. A year later, Levy would be by the Shoemakers' side again when their comet ended its four-billion-year-long journey through the solar system and collided with Jupiter in the most stunning astronomical display of the century. Not only did this collision revolutionize our understanding of the history of the solar system, but it also offered a spectacular confirmation of one scientist's life work. As a close friend and colleague of Shoemaker (who died in 1997 at the age of 69), Levy offers a uniquely insightful account of his life and the way it has shaped our thinking about the universe.


Early in his training as a geologist, Shoemaker suspected that it wasn't volcanic activity but rather collisions with comets and asteroids that created most of the craters on the moon and most other bodies in the solar system. Convincing the scientific community of the plausibility of "impact theory," and revealing its power for penetrating mysteries such as the extinction of the dinosaurs and the timing of the Earth's eventual demise, became Shoemaker's mission. Through conversations with Shoemaker and his family, Levy reconstructs the journey that began with a young geologist's serious desire to go to the moon in the late1940s. Sent by the government to find a way to harvest plutonium, Shoemaker instead found evidence in desert craters for what became his impact theory. While he never became an astronaut, he did become the first geologist hired by NASA and subsequently set the research agenda for the first manned lunar landing.


After a series of victories and setbacks for Shoemaker, the collision of Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter provided the most convincing proof to date of the role of impacts in our solar system. Levy's explanation of the scientific reasoning that guided Shoemaker in his career up to this dramatic point--as well as his personal portrait of a man who found white-water rafting to be an easy way to relax--sets these fascinating events in a human scale. This biography shows what Shoemaker's legacy will be for our understanding of the story of the Earth well into the twenty-first century.

 

Contenido

Of Bonding and Discovery 1993
3
Of Family and Ex 19251948
14
Over the Sea Over the Sea 1948
27
Springtime Carolyn and the Colorado Plateau 19481952
30
A Revolution in Earth
44
Impact
58
A Shot in the Dark 19531960
69
A Dream Ends A Dream Begins 19601963
81
The Little Prince Revisited 19721979
160
A Ship Sails 19771989
175
Comets and Carolyn 19801995
184
A RockKnocking Geologist 19841995
197
Springtime on Jupiter 1993
213
Yes Virginia Comets Do Hit Planets 1994
225
New Challenges 19951997
241
Dr Shoemaker I Presume 1997
251

Just Passing By on My Way to the Moon 19641965
92
Surveyors Golden Years 19661968
101
One Giant Leap 19681969
113
Sail Along Silvery Moon 19691970
126
Chairman Gene 19691972
138
Shootout at the Moenkopi Corral 19701972
151
Epilogue
262
Notes
269
Selected Bibliography
285
Index
297
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David H. Levy has discovered twenty-one comets, eight of them using his own backyard telescope. Science Editor for Parade magazine, he also writes the monthly "Star Trails" column in Sky and Telescope. Levy is the author of many books relating to astronomy, from beginners' observing guides to such recent popular accounts as Comets: Creators and Destroyers. He has written two other scientific biographies: The Man Who Sold the Milky Way: A Biography of Bart Bok and Clyde Tombaugh: Discoverer of Planet Pluto. Levy's awards include an Emmy for his role in writing the 1997 Discovery Channel documentary Three Minutes to Impact.

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