Comets Burial

A man may be a scoundrel, a crook, a high-phased confidence man, and still work toward a great dream which will be worth far more than the momentary damage his swindles cost. Excerpt Outside Tycho Station on the Moon, Jess Brinker showed Arne Copeland the odd footprints made in the dust by explorers from Mars, fifty million years ago. A man-made cover of clear plastic now kept them from being trampled. "Who hasn't heard about such prints?" Copeland growled laconically. "There's no air or weather here to rub them out--even in eternity. Thanks for showing a fresh-arrived greenhorn around..." Copeland was nineteen, tough, willing to learn, but wary. His wide mouth was usually sullen, his grey eyes a little narrowed in a face that didn't have to be so grim. Back in Iowa he had a girl. Frances. But love had to wait, for he needed the Moon the way Peary had once needed the North Pole. Earth needed it, too--for minerals; as an easier, jump-off point to the planets because of its weak gravity; as a place for astronomical observatories, unhampered by the murk of an atmosphere; as sites for labs experimenting in forces too dangerous to be conducted on a heavily-populated world, and for a dozen other purposes. Young Copeland was ready for blood, sweat, and tears in his impulse to help conquer the lunar wastes. He sized up big, swaggering Jess Brinker, and admitted to himself that this man, who was at least ten years his senior, could easily be a phony, stalking suckers. Yet, Copeland reserved judgment. Like any tenderfoot anywhere, he needed an experienced man to show him the ropes. He already knew the Moon intimately from books: A hell of silence, some of it beautiful: Huge ringwalls. Blazing sunlight, inky shadow. Grey plains, black sky. Blazing stars, with the great blurry bluish globe of Earth among them. You could yearn to be on the Moon, but you could go bats and die there, too--or turn sour, because the place was too rough for your guts. Afield, you wore a spacesuit, and conversed by helmet radiophone. Otherwise you lived in rooms and holes dug underground, and sealed up. The scant water you dared use was roasted out of gypsum rock. The oxygen you breathed was extracted from lunar oxides by a chemical process. Then air-rejuvenator apparatus reseparated it from the carbon-dioxide you exhaled, so that you could use it over and over. Copeland had read the tales: With that kind of frugality as the price of survival, lunar prospectors could turn selfish to the point of queerness. Afraid somebody might follow them to their mineral claims, they'd take more pains to leave as little spoor as possible than a fox being tracked by dogs. "Speaking of how footprints last around here," Copeland remarked for the sake of conversation, "I understand you've got to be careful--stick to high ridges, and to parts of the flat maria where there's no old volcanic ash or dust of thermal erosion."

Table of Contents Stamped Caution Comet's Burial Big Pill The Eternal Wall

This unique collaboration between a classicist and physicist at the University of Illinois at Chicago is the first work to combine the evidence from both China and Rome for the spectacular daylight comet of 44 BC, perhaps the most famous comet in antiquity. This investigation, which alsoexamines allusions to this comet in astrological literature from later antiquity, sheds new light on the significance of the comet as a powerful symbol in the political propaganda that launched Augustus' career.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Comets are small bodies, but of great cosmic relevance. Given its pristine nature, they may preserve valuable and unique information on thechemical and physical processes that took place in theearly solar system, and that may be occurring in the formation of other planetary systems. They might have even played a very important role in the origin of life on Earth. Beyond that, since ancient times comets have inspired awe, superstition, and also curiosity anddebate. Their sudden apparitions challenged the long-held view of the immutability of the heavens, which triggered a long debate on whether comets had a heavenly or terrestrial nature. Therefore, comets have a prominent role in the history of scienti?cthought, that goes back to the most ancient civilizations. The last apparition of comet Halley in 1986 was a landmark since it arouse a great expectation in the scienti?c community and in the public at large. For the ?rst time, a ?otilla of spacecrafts visited a comet. Agreat number of popular and technical books were written on Halley, and comets in general, around the mid-eighties. The interest in comets never subsided after Halley’s passage which is re?ected in the large volume of printed material on these bodies. I have taken the challenge to write a new book on comets that summarizes most of the recent advances on thesubject, including my own workdeveloped during the last 25 years.

In the 1950s, Immanuel Velikovsky propounded catastrophism in several popular books including the bestselling Worlds in Collision. He speculated that the ‘planet’ Venus was in fact a former comet which had been ejected from Jupiter. Subsequently, 3,500 years ago, it made two catastrophically close passes by Earth 52 years apart. It later interacted with Mars, which had a series of near collisions with Earth ending in 687 BCE, before finally settling into its current orbit.Was Velikovsky correct, did Venus appear as a gigantic comet in ancient times? Comet Venus is the second book in the God King Scenario Series. The first book, An Ancient World in Chaos, presented a fascinating model whereby Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Moon played havoc with Earth for an incredible 3,000 years, coming so close they loomed larger than the Sun. In support of such incredible claims, Gilligan calls upon the most fascinating civilisation of ancient times – the Ancient Egyptians. He proposes that the divine god-kings of Pharaonic Egypt were first and foremost guises of planetary bodies as they appeared to move back and forth to Earth. He further proposes that these heavenly monarchs were represented by human ‘doubles’ – mortal Pharaohs who were believed to be earthly manifestations of god-king planets.The primary objective of Comet Venus is to vindicate Velikovsky and conclusively demonstrate that the comet images on the front and back covers of this book have nothing whatsoever to do with the Sun! They are exact physical representations of the planet Venus as it took on the attributes of a comet in the skies above Earth only a few thousand years ago.

In 1993, the U.S. Department of Defense declassified information dealing with frequent explosions in the upper atmosphere caused by meteoric impact. It is estimated that impacts have occurred of a magnitude equivalent to the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima. Not all such space voyagers meet their end in the atmosphere, however; huge craters attest to the bombardment of earth over millions of years, and a major impact may have resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs. An impact in Siberia near the beginning of this century proves that such events are not confined to geologic time. Hazards Due to Comets and Asteroids marks a significant step in the attempt to come to grips with the threats posed by such phenomena. It brings together more than one hundred scientists from around the world, who draw on observational and theoretical research to focus on the technical problems related to all aspects of dealing with these hazards: searching for and identifying hazardous comets and asteroids; describing their statistics and characteristics; intercepting and altering the orbits of dangerous objects; and applying existent technologies—rocket boosters, rendezvous and soft-landing techniques, instrumentation—to such missions. The book considers defensive options for diverting or disrupting an approaching body, including solar sails, kinetic-energy impacts, nuclear explosives, robotic mass drivers, and various propulsion systems. A cataclysmic impact posing a threat to life on Earth is a possibility that tomorrow's technology is capable of averting. This book examines in depth the reality of the threat and proposes practical measures that can be initiated now should we ever need to deal with it.

Over forty authorities present sections on the nucleus, dust, coma, and tails of comets, along with sections on their origin, and relationships to other solar system bodies. . . . An excellent book.ÑSpace News "The volume is highly recommended to all interested in comets and the Solar System."ÑJournal of the British Astronomical Association "A good representation of the studies that are currently being done on comets, and it is an extremely good source of information on a wide variety of topics."ÑInternational Comet Quarterly "Extremely well-written and informative. . . . A must for library collections."ÑThe Observatory