The following list provides further reading and web links for each of
the articles. The references are aimed at a popular science level
rather than an expert level. Suggestions
for additional links are welcome.
Michael Paine, April 2001.
- "Rain of Iron and Ice" by John Lewis. Addison Wesley, 1996.
- "Rogue asteroids and doomsday comets" by Duncan Steel. John
Wiley & Sons, 1995.
- "Impact" by Gerrit Verschuur,Oxford University Press, 1996.
Updates
- "Salto nello Spazio" by Michael Martin-Smith, published by
Tre Editori GELIBTER<ansa@ada.net.tr> (due for publication in Dec
1999). In Italian.
- Comet and asteroid impact hazard on a populated Earth by Dr
John Lewis, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona.
Includes software to simulate impacts. Review.
- Ultimate
impact - The Why Files
- "Target
Earth" by Duncan Steel - released Nov 2000.
- "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (Random House, 1980) - fusion
processes in stars
- "Mining the Sky" by John S. Lewis (Addison Wesley, 1996) -
composition of asteroids and comets, space propulsion systems,
techniques for mining asteroids, space colonies.
- PERMANENT - asteroid mining http://www.permanent.com/
- NEAP - Spacedev Corp asteroid prospecting mission. http://www.spacedev.com/NEAP/NEAP.html
Updates
- 25 Nov 1999 Unisci: Humans Seen Living
On Other Planets In 100 Years - includes asteroid mining
- 27 Nov 1999: Purple
salt and tiny drops of water in meteorites. by Jeffery Taylor,
Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
- 2 Dec 1999: Amino
acid survival in large cometary impacts by E. Pierazzo and C. F.
Chyba, abstract from Meteoritics
& Planetary Science.
- Meteorites and
Their Properties - Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of
Arizona.
- Space.com Business
Sees Cash Among the Constellations and One man's
vision of profit in space.
- 18 Feb 2000 Space.com: Many
pennies from heaven - Nickel from the Sudbury impact in Canada
generates $3 billion per year.
- PSR Discoveries, March 2000 Supernova
Debris in the Solar System. Also From
a Cloud of Gas and Dust to an Asteroid with Percolating Hot Water
and Moving
Stars and Shifting Sands of Presolar History.
- NASA Supernova
Explosions.
- 30 May 2000 SpaceDaily: Ancient
Meteorite Hints At Sol's Birth.
- 18 Sep 2000 Space.com: Human
Missions to Titan, Ganymede, Deep Space [and asteroids] In NASA's Future-
Travelling within this region, access to numbers of
asteroids become feasible. "In the region of space between Earth and
Jupiter, there are many tens of thousands of asteroids -- some composed
of valuable
minerals, others of materials that could be used to make propellants,
in space construction or for commercial ventures," the plan explains.
- 3 Oct 2000 PSRD: The
Oldest Metal in the Solar System - Shiny grains of metal in a
type of stony meteorite called CH chondrites contain important
information about conditions in the cloud of gas and dust from which
the Sun and planets formed.
- 5 Oct 2000 NEAR team: Consolidated
but Undifferentiated - ...Earth's crust is the outermost layer
of a differentiated body. Iron, nickel and other metals (including gold
and platinum) were once finely dispersed throughout the primitive
material from which Earth formed, but melting occurred early in Earth's
history, and
these metals settled for the most part into the core of the Earth. Only
a
small proportion of these metals can still be found in Earth's crust.
On
Eros, however, these metals would still be present, dispersed
throughout the
body of the asteroid. There have been serious suggestions that
commercial mining of asteroids may someday become viable. While
undifferentiated Eros may be 10% metallic nickel-iron by weight (with
most of the iron in chemically bound forms), there are also
differentiated asteroids, like 1986DA, that are
almost pure nickel-iron.
- 23 Nov 2000 PSRD: Mining
the Moon, Mars and Asteroids - a report on the Space Resources Roundtable.
- 9 Dec 2000: THE REALLY,
REALLY BIG DIG: MINING ASTEROIDS THE FUTURE OF ISS?
- 29 Dec 2000 Space.com: Space
ANTS: Futuristic Probes to Cruise Asteroid Belt
- 7 Mar 01 Sci Am: How
feasible—and valuable—is asteroid mining? (comments from David
McKay and John
Lewis)
- 23 Mar 01 New Scientist: Vapour
trail - Miniature spacecraft could puff their way across the galaxy
using steam engines.
- 27 Mar 03 PSS: The
statistics of flight opportunities to accessible near-Earth asteroids
- One of the objects involved, 1999 AO10, can be
rendezvoused with using a total velocity increment that is smaller than
that required to establish a lunar orbiter.
- 18 Mar 04 SpaceDaily: Surrey
Successfully Demonstrates Steam Micro-Propulsion In-Orbit
- 11 Nov 04 Space.com: Mining
the Moon, the Gateway to Mars
- 19 May 05 Space.com: Not
So Picture Perfect: Proposed Lunar Landing Site Has Drawbacks + Moon Miners' Manifesto
- 12 Jun 05 SAE Paper: Near
Earth Objects (Neo) as Material Resources for Future Space Architecture
Applications.
- 10 Jun 06 Acta Astronautica: A captured asteroid : Our David's stone for shielding earth and providing the cheapest extraterrestrial material
- 14 Mar 07 Acta Astronautica : Materials refining on the Moon.
See also Tsunami from Asteroid/Comet Impacts http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/spacegd7.html
- "Bikini - a way of life lost", National Geographic, June
1986. Description of the Bikini atomic bomb tests.
- "Mt St Helens: the day the sky fell", National Geographic,
January 1981. Comparison of the Mt St Helens explosion with other
volcanic explosions.
- "Rain of Iron and Ice" by John Lewis. Addison Wesley, 1996.
Description of impact scenarios, including tsunami.
- "Rogue asteroids and doomsday comets" by Duncan Steel. John
Wiley & Sons, 1995.
- "Modelling asteroid impact and tsunami" by David Crawford
and Charles Mader. Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol 16, No. 1,
1998.
(available on the Internet at http://epubs.lanl.gov/tsunami/
)
- "Modelling the Eltanin asteroid tsunami" by Charles
Mader. Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol 16, No. 1, 1998.
(available
on the Internet at http://epubs.lanl.gov/tsunami/
)
- Tsunami from Asteroid/Comet Impacts http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/spacegd7.html
- "Tsunami!"
by by Frank I. González , Scientific American, July 1999.
- Missing link? - Human ancestors 2 million years ago. http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/99/pr9931.htm
- 3 Apr 02 UniSci: Superfloods
Controversial, But Aid Flood Prediction
Updates
- "Rain of Iron and Ice" by John Lewis. Addison Wesley, 1996.
- "Rogue asteroids and doomsday comets" by Duncan Steel. John
Wiley & Sons, 1995.
- "Impact Cratering: A Geologic Process" by H Jay Melosh.
Oxford University Press, 1989.
- "Impact Cratering on Earth" by Richard Grieve, Scientific
American, April 1990.
- "What Caused the Mass Extinction: An Extraterrestrial
Impact" by Walter Alvarez and Frank Asaro, Scientific American, October
1990
(prior to discovery of Chicxulub Crater)
- "What Caused the Mass Extinction: A Volcanic Eruption" by
Vincent Courtillot, Scientific American, October 1990
- "The
Kuiper Belt" by Jane Luu and David Jewitt, Scientific American, May
1996.
- Canadian Geological Survey - Impact Crater Database
- http://gdcinfo.agg.nrcan.gc.ca:80/toc.html?/crater/world_craters.html
- Shiva Hypothesis of Periodic Impacts http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/crater.html#shiva
- Asteroid and comets and mass extinctions http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/crater.html
- "Ignition of global wildfires at the Cretaceous/Tertiary
boundary" by MELOSH, H.J.; SCHNEIDER, N.M.; ZAHNLE, K.J.; LATHAM,
D. Nature, vol. 343, Jan. 18, 1990
- The
Mass-Extinction Debates - How Science Works in a Crisis. Edited by
William Glen. This book examines the arguments and behavior of the
scientists who have been locked in conflict over two competing theories
to explain why, 65 million years ago, most life on earth—including the
dinosaurs—perished.
- "Jules
Verne, Misunderstood Visionary" by Arthur Evans and Ron Miller,
Scientific American, April 1997.
- "Extremophiles"
by by Michael T. Madigan and Barry L. Marrs, Scientific American, April
1997.
- "Swapping Rocks: Exchange of Surface Material Among the
Planets" by H Jay Melosh. The Planetary Report. July 1994. Extract at http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/swaprock.html
- "Novel
nano-organisms from Australian sandstones" (PDF) by Philippa
Uwins, Richard Webb and Anthony Taylor, American Mineralogist,
Vol83, p1541, 1998. See also links at http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/swaprock.html
- "The
Fifth Miracle" by Paul Davies, The Penguin Press, 1998. Origins of
life, extremophiles, panspermia.
- "Survivors from Mars" by Paul Davies, New Scientist, 12 Sept
1998 http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980912/survivors.html
- The Martians in Your Kidneys by Neil Boyce, New Scientist,
21 August1999. http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990821/contents.html(contents
only)
- Interplanetary Infestations by Paul Davies, Sky &
Telescope, September1999 http://www.skypub.com/skytel/tofc/9909toc.html
(contents only)
- Life at the Limit by J Kelly Beatty, Sky & Telescope,
September 1999.http://www.skypub.com/skytel/tofc/9909toc.html
(contents only)
Updates
- 9 Dec 1999 NSF Bacteria May
Thrive in Antarctic Lake: Holds Implications for Search for Life in the
Solar System
- Critters,
critters everywhere - The Why Files
- No
signs of life - The Why Files (ALH84001)
- Molecular Biology
of Extremophiles Laboratory of IGM at Orsay
- Zapping
Mars Rocks with Gamma Rays. PSR, Dec 1999.
- "Seeding Earth: Comets, Oceans and Life" by Chris Chyba,
January 1990 issue of the
Planetary Report.
- BBC Bugs
in Space "Astrobiologists are to test whether life from Mars could
have survived
a journey to Earth by hiding inside meteorites..." - 14 Jan 2000
Space.com: Did
bacteria survive the trip to Mars? Paper
delivered at AAS
- Life
from a
dirty snowball - NASA
- "Microbes
deep
inside the Earth" by James Fredrickson and Tullis Ontsott,
Scientific American, October 1996.
- 25 Feb 2000 InSCIght: Going
Deep for an Unearthly Microbe
- Journal Extremophiles:
Life under extreme conditions (subscription required to view
articles)
- 6 Mar 2000 Nature: Resurrecting
life on Mars?
- 23 Mar 2000: New
method of finding nannobacteria in rust could be used on Mars ocks.
Also NANNOBACTERIA The
University of Texas at Austin Department of Geological Sciences
- 23 Mar 2000 Spacedaily: Scientist
Puts Short Odds On Europan Life.
- 30 Mar 2000 SF Chronicle: A
test for "life from space' theory - Experiments with high-speed
guns show that comets could have delivered the building blocks of life
to Earth billions of years ago. To be published in the journal Origins of Life
and
Evolution of the Biosphere.
- 5 Apr 2000: Panspermia
Revisited: Can Microbes Survive a Trip Through the Solar System?
and Impact
Delivery of Organics to Earth, Mars, and Europa.
- 10 May 2000 SpaceDaily: CSIRO Team Brings
Back Deep Ocean Life Sample and Space.com: New
Find Proves Life Can Thrive in Hostile Conditions.
- 25 May 2000 PSRD: Liquid
water on Mars: The story from meteorites... these two studies
of weathering products in Martian meteorites suggest that small amounts
of
water were available near the surface of Mars during the past several
hundred
million years.
- 3 Jun 2000: Australian ABC Science Show - Nanobes,
Tiny
Diamonds (from asteroid impacts) and Core
Rock.
- 9 Jun 2000 ABC: New
Evidence of Life’s Origins Researchers have found what they
believe are fossils 3.2 billion years old, suggesting that life on
Earth originated in volcano-heated ocean depths where sunlight never
entered.
- 30 Jun 2000 Nature: Life, but not
as we know it
- 13 Jul 2000 BBC: TOUGH
MICROBES DISCOVERED AT THE SOUTH POLE.
- 18 Jul 2000 SpaceDaily: Viking Data
May Hide New Evidence For Life + The Need For
Mars Mission Exobiologists.
- Science@NASA The
Sagan Criteria for Life Revisited
- 27 Jul 2000 BBC: Hot-spring
bug goes into space. Also SPACE
'BUGS'
TO TEST ALIEN MICROBE THEORY.(UT) Sci Am: From Mars to Earth in a
Meteorite?
- 1 Sep 2000 Space.com: Life
Amidst Glaciers Thrives and Survives and New
Clues About Martian Meteorites Baffle Scientists. Also Discovery: Meteorites
Could Reveal Martian Life.
- 19 Oct 2000 New Scientist: Eternal
life - The resurrection of a bacterium after 250 million years
in salt suggests it may be immortal. Also Nature Methuselan microbes.
- 28 Oct 2000 Caltech: New
results on Martian meteorite support hypothesis that life can jump
between planets + links.
- 1 Nov 2000 Space.com: The
New Case for Panspermia + Q&As with Chandra
Wickramasinghe and Jay
Melosh.
- 29 Nov 2000 NASA: LIFE UNDER
BOMBARDMENT (odd that my 'lifeboats
in space' suggestion has not been raised).
- 8 Dec 2000 Space.com: Catastrophe,
Mother of Evolution: Life Survived Early Bombardment.
- 14 Dec 2000 SpaceDaily: Compelling
Evidence For Magnetotactic Mars Bacteria - Tiny magnetite
crystals -- so called magnetofossils -- embedded in the meteorite were
confirmed to be the type produced only by a biological process unique
to magnetotactic
bacteria. Paper
in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. BBC.
- 27 Feb 01 BBC: New
evidence for life on Mars? Scientists have published what they
claim is conclusive evidence that bacteria once lived on Mars. PNAS (PDF2,
PDF1
). Space.com,
ScienceDaily.
Scientific
American. More
Evidence of Life on Mars Rock? Not So Fast.
- 13 Mar 01 BBC: Volcanoes
on Mars 'may be active'.
- 16 Mar 01 Yahoo: Mars
Calamity May Have Created Conditions for Life (Volcanic eruptions)
- 17 Mar 01 SpaceDaily: All Aboard the
Meteor Express of Life (interstellar
transfers)
- 9 Apr 01 New Scientist: Wish
upon a star - Life may spread in space when star systems pass
close
by.
- 8 Jun 01 BBC: Row
over ancient bacteria - Scientists are arguing over whether a
strain of bacteria has really been revived after 250 million years.
- 13 Jun 01 SpaceDaily: Life's Rocky Road
Between Worlds (Paper on transpermia by Michael Paine)
- 8 Aug 01 NASA Astrobiology Institute: Proceedings
of 2001 Conference (large PDF files).
- 30 Oct 01 Guardian: Invaders
that rock the world - Are we really descendants of bacteria that
rode
on cosmic cannon balls, asks Matthew Genge.
- 22 Dec 01: MarsBugs
website with newsletter.
- 11 Jan 02 New Scientist: Life
from Mars (space experiments confirm hardiness of bacteria and
chances
of transpermia)
- How about Venus? ScienceDaily 21 Jan 01: Study
Suggests Venus Could Have Been Wet Planet.
- 8 May 03 UCLA:MARS,
PANSPERMIA, AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE: WHERE DID IT ALL BEGIN?
- 8 May 03 Astrobiology (journal): Exchange
of Meteorites (and Life?) Between Stellar Systems - H. J. Melosh
- 1 Jun 03 BBC: Maybe
we are
the Martians
- 12 Dec 04 PSI: Onset of
Impact-Generated Hydrothermal Systems: Hydrocode Modeling -
Pierazzo E., N.A. Artemieva, B.A. Ivanov
- 10 May 05 Asteroids:
Now for the Good News - talk given at Australian Centre for
Astrobiology in 2003.
- "Astronomical Catastrophes in Earth History" by Sidney van
Den Bergh, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, vol
106, no.701, July 1994.
- "Rain of Iron and Ice" by John Lewis, 1996.
- "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" by Duncan Steel, 1995.
- "Flammable Ice" by Erwin Suess, Gerhard Bohrmann, Jens
Greinert and Erwin Lausch, Scientific
American, November 1999.
- "Hell on Earth" by Michael Day, New
Scientist, 20 November 1999.
- "Extinctions" by Rick Gore, National Geographic, June 1989.
- "Ignition of global wildfires at the Cretaceous/Tertiary
boundary" by MELOSH, H.J.; SCHNEIDER, N.M.; ZAHNLE, K.J.; LATHAM,
D. Nature, vol. 343, Jan. 18, 1990
Updates about the KT (Dinosaur) extinction
- "North American impact structures hold giant field
potential" by Richard R Donofrio, Oil and Gas Journal, May 11, 1998. http://ogj.penwellnet.com/ -
subscribers only (trial available). PDF copy from Institute for Exploration and
Development Geosciences.
- "The petroleum potential of Australian Phanerozoic impact
structures" by John D Gorter, APPEA Journal, 1998. http://www.appea.com.au/(paper not
available online)
- "Considerations about recent predictions of impending
shortages of petroleum evaluated from the perspective of modern
petroleum science" by J F Kenney, Joint Institute of the Physics of the
Earth. http://www.csun.edu/~vegeo005/Energy.html.
Includes the quote by Lomonosov and a description of oil exploration
successes in Russia.
- "Recharging of oil and gas fields" by Tom Gold. (web
article, September 1999) http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/recharging/
- "The Deep Hot Biosphere" by Tom Gold. 1999 http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/index.html
- "The origin of Methane (and Oil) in the Crust of the Earth"
by Tom Gold. USGS Professional Paper 1570, 1993. http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/usgs.html
- "Postulated impact craters yield oil and gas, lively debate"
by G Alan Petzet. Oil and Gas Journal, April 10, 1995.
http://ogj.penwellnet.com/
- "Impact Cratering on the Earth" by Richard Grieve.
Scientific American, April 1990.
- "Petroleum"
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- "Chicxulub
Impact Crater Provides Clues to Earth's History" by Virgil L.
Sharpton, Lunar and Planetary Institute
- Origin
of a Late Eocene to pre-Miocene buried crater and breccia lens at
Fohn-1, North Bonaparte Basin, Timor Sea:
A probable extraterrestrial connection by John D. Gorter* and
Andrew Y.
Glikson, Meteoritics & Planetary Science vol35 (March 2000)
- Petrology
and microstructure of distal impact ejecta from the Flinders Ranges,
Australia
by Victor A. Gostin and Marek Zbik, Meteoritics & Planetary
Science 34 (July 1999)
- Oil's
origin - The Why Files - "We should mention that while a few
renegade scientists claim that petroleum has an inorganic (sic -
non-biological)
origin, the conventional wisdom [biological origin] , is pretty
convincing"
- "Microbes
deep
inside the Earth" by James Fredrickson and Tullis Ontsott,
Scientific American, October 1996. (caution: their links no longer
work!)
- 18 Mar 2000 ABC: The
Theory of Unlimited Oil.
- 30 May 2000 NSF: Seafloor Off
Mid-Atlantic Coast Highly Charged with Gas - ...possible cracks
along the outer continental shelf off the mid-Atlantic coast might lead
to a tsunami-causing landslide ... discovered that the entire area is
charged with gas.
- 6 Aug 2000 BBC: Ancient
oil points to 'cradle of life' - still preoccupied with the idea
that oil must come from organisms.
- 6 Aug 2000 Discover: The Panther
Mountain Crater - in New York state. Panther
Mountain impact website
- 28 Aug 2000 Scientific American: Awash in
Oil.
- 4 Apr 01 Journal of Petroleum Geology: Astroblemes and
oil - a "classic" by Richard Donofrio (2.9Mb PDF)
- 13 Dec 01 Internet Geology: Ring Structure
in Basement of South Tatar arch - Super-giant Romashkino oil
field and other fields occur on a gigantic ring structure in the
basement rocks. This feature, the Shentalinsko-Cheremshan structure,
has a diameter of
250 km and is expressed clearly in the gravity and magnetic fields in
the
form of a ring distribution of anomalies...Development of the
Shentalinsko-Cheremshan ring structure began with formation of an
isometric arch in the Earth's crust due to introduction of mantle
material. [that is, it is not thought to be due to an impact but
it shows the potential of ringed structures to trap oil]
- 9 May 04 GCA: Composition
and origin of hydrothermal petroleum and associated lipids in the
sulfide deposits of the Rainbow field (Mid-Atlantic Ridge at 36°N)
- A search for molecular evidence
for abiogenic thermocatalytic synthesis of organic compounds was
negative...
- 15 May 04: THE
SHIVA CRATER: IMPLICATIONS FOR DECCAN VOLCANISM, INDIA-SEYCHELLES
RIFTING, DINOSAUR EXTINCTION, AND PETROLEUM ENTRAPMENT AT THE KT
BOUNDARY.
- 26 May 04: Chicxulub
impact: The origin of reservoir and [ejecta layer] seal facies in the
southeastern Mexico oil fields. Geology: Vol. 28,
No. 4, pp. 307–310 (abstract)
- 16 Sep 04 Nature: Anaerobic
hydrocarbon biodegradation in deep subsurface oil reservoirs.
- 2 Feb 08 Nature: Deep-ocean vents are a source of oil and gas -
these organic molecules are being created through inorganic processes,
rather than the more typical decomposition of once-living material.
More on hydrocarbons in comets and asteroids
- "Comets" by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. 1986.
- "Mining the Sky" by John Lewis, 1996.
- "Life's
Far Flung Raw Materials" by Max Bernstein, Scott Sandford and Louis
Allamandola, Scientific American, July 1999
- 1 May 2000: NASA Craft Finds
Possible Tar in Stars - Preliminary measurements of
interstellar dust particles encountered by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft
indicate the surprising presence of large tar-like molecules
See also references on extremophiles.
- More results from the simulation.
- "Comet and Asteroid Impacts on a Populated Earth" by John
S. Lewis, Academic Press. 1999. Includes a diskette with the Hazards
program, written in GW Basic. See also this review.
- "Astronomical Catastrophes in Earth History" by Sidney van
Den Bergh, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, vol
106, no.701, July 1994.
- "Rain of Iron and Ice" by John Lewis, 1996.
- "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" by Duncan Steel, 1995.
- "The Biospheric hazard of large impacts" by David Morrison
and Clarke Chapman. Proceedings
of the Planetary Defense Workshop 1995.
- "Impacts and life: Living in a risky Planetary System" by
David Morrison, Carl Sagan's Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- "Carl Sagan and Nuclear Winter" by Richard Turco, Carl
Sagan's Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- "Damage from the impacts of small asteroids" by Jack Hills
and Patrick Goda, Planetary
Space Sciences, Vol 46, No 2/3 pp219, 1998.
Updates
- "Calamity
at Meteor Crater" Sky & Telescope. Nov 1999.
- Feb 2000: Benny Peiser to give a talk about impacts over the
last 10,000 years. AAAS Annual
Meeting. More details of the simulation
that Benny used in his talk. Adding up the risks of
cosmic impact: Researchers turn attention to smaller,
more frequent blasts (interview with Benny Peiser and David
Morrison).
The Why Files: Colossal
cataclysm -- facing the asteroid threat
- 'The mitigation, management and survivability of
asteroid/comet impact with Earth' by Victoria Garshnek, David Morrison and Frederick Burkle, Space Policy (Vol
16
(2000) 213-222)
- A
"Tunguska" Event in British Guyana in 1935? By Duncan Steel,
Meteorite! February 1996.
- 24 Jan 2001 SpaceDaily: Earth May
Have Cooled 10 Degrees Over Past 3 Million Years. The
discovery, announced in the American journal, Science, adds weight to
the theory that climate change played a significant part in the
evolution of early humans.
- 23 Jul 02 Bioastronomy 2002
paper by Paine and Peiser: The Frequency and
Consequences of Cosmic
Impacts Since the Demise of the Dinosaurs (280K PDF). A shortened,
refereed version is now published in the Proceedings
of Bioastronomy 2002: Life Among the Stars. See also CLIMATE,
COMETS AND HUMAN HISTORY by Dr Vic Gostin
- "A reduced estimate of the number of kilometre-sized
near-Earth asteroids" by David Rabinowitz, Eleanor Helin, Kenneth
Lawrence and Steven Pravdo, Nature 13 Jan 2000. Nature
feature of the week. See also the comments by David Jewitt.
- "Comet and Asteroid Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth" by
John S. Lewis, Academic Press. 1999.
- "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" by Duncan Steel, 1995.
- "Near Earth Objects - NEOs", UK Parliamentary Report POST
126, April 1999. PDF version available at http://www.parliament.uk/post/pn126.pdf
- "The NEO flux, present and past" by Eugene Shoemaker. Proceedings of the Planetary
Defense Workshop 1995.
- Dark Matter
Telescope - The DMT would make uniquely powerful contributions
to
the study of near-Earth objects...
- "Evaluation
of ground-based optical surveys for near-Earth asteroids", by Alan
W. Harris, Planetary And Space Science (46)2-3 (1998) pp. 283-290
See also this text
copy at CCNet.
Spacecraft
Missions
- List of missions to asteroids and
comets - with links.
- "NEAR Mission Overview and Trajectory Design" by Robert
Farquhar, David Dunham and Jim McAdams. Available from the NEAR website.
- "Eros or
bust" - NASA Space Science News.
- "On to Eros!" by Clark Chapman, September 1997 issue of the
Planetary Report.
- "Its a small, small world: Missions to Near Earth Asteroids"
by Donald Davis and Alan Friedlander, November 1991 issue of the
Planetary Report. Explains Delta Vs and mission trajectories for a
range of NEO targets (this was a special issue on NEAs - see also Clark
Chapman's News and Reviews).
- "Romancing the Stone" by Robert Farquhar and Joseph Veverka,
September 1995 issues of the
Planetary Report. A detailed description of the NEAR mission.
- "Basics
of Space Flight: Gravity Assist" by David Doody. Aslo in May 1998
issue of the
Planetary Report.
- "Dreadful
sorry, Clementine" by Leon Jaroff, Time .27 Oct 1997.
- "Nanorover
to help
fetch asteroid material" by Glen Golightly, Space.com
- "Stardust
Completes Most Critical Maneuver of Comet-Catching Mission"
"A Bus
Between the Planets" by James Oberg and Buzz Aldrin, Scientific
American, March 2000. Gravity-assist trajectories between Earth and
Mars would reduce the cost of shuttling human crews and their
equipment Also "To Mars by
Way of Its Moons" by S. Fred Singer. Also an article on advanced
propulsion
systems, such as ion drive. - WHAT HAPPENED TO
THE
SATURN V PLANS? Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, the
Saturn
V blueprints have not been lost...
- Possible Magnum
rocket for launching a manned mission to Mars.
- Saturn
5
Blueprints Safely in Storage follow up story by Michael Paine.
- NASA's Space
Launch Initiative
and press
release - 8 Mar 2000.
- Popular Science - 5 Year Guide to
Space Missions.
- 23 Dec 2000: The
Hera Mission (asteroid sample return). Also at Space.com.
- 29 Dec 2000 CNN: The
Real HAL: Artificial Intelligence in Space (Deep Space 1)
- 25 May 01 Space.com: Deep
Impact Approved: Humanity's Turn to Slam into a Comet
- 16 Jan 02 Space.com: America's
Most Powerful (current) Rocket Set for Launch Today - might be
useful for chasing asteroids!
- 28 Mar 06 Space Review: Thunder in a bottle: the non-use of the mighty F-1 engine - While
NASA is rethinking its selection of the space shuttle main engine for
the heavy-lift launch vehicle that is one of the cornerstones of the
exploration plan, one engine not being considered to replace it is the
F-1 from the Saturn 5 program. Dwayne Day studies an earlier effort to
revive the F-1 engine, and the costs and challenges involved with doing
so.
Asteroid
deflection
- "Killing
asteroids" by Mark Alpert, Popular Mechanics, April 1997.
- "Averting
doomsday" by Jeffery Winters, Discover, August 1998.
- "Interdiction Summary Report" by Robert Barker and Vadim
Simonenko, Proceedings of the
Planetary Defense Workshop. 1995.
- "Non-Nuclear Strategies for Deflecting Comets and
Asteroids" by H Jay Melosh, Proceedings of the Planetary
Defense Workshop. 1995.
- "Optimal Trajectories for Interception of
Earth-Orbit-Crossing Asteroids" by Bruce Conway, Proceedings of the Planetary
Defense Workshop. 1995.
- "Making and Braking Asteroids" by Alan Harris, Nature, 4 May
1998.
- "Mining the Sky" by John Lewis, Addison Wesley, 1996.
- "Comet and Asteroid Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth" by
John S. Lewis, Academic Press. 1999.
- "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" by Duncan Steel, 1995.
- CLOSE
APPROACHES OF ASTEROID 1999 AN10: RESONANT AND NON-RESONANT RETURNS"
by Andrea Milani and Steven R. Chesley.
- "The
Continuing Story Of Asteroid 1999 AN10" by Paul Chodas, Near Earth
Object Program Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, May 18,
1999
- "Comet and asteroid hazards: threat and mitigation" by
Johndale Solem. Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol 17 No. 3 pp141.
Download the 6.9 Mb PDF file from LANL.
- Space Studies Institute - Asteroid Deflection.
- 28 Jul 2000 NASA: Hubble Sees Comet
Linear Blow its Top.
- 11 May 01 Space.com: Insurance
Plans for Humanity's Survival. (mass driver technology)
- 2 Jun 01 Space.com: Asteroid
Busting: We Have the Technology.
- 10 Nov 01 Tumbling Stone: ASTEROID
DEFLECTION: WE ONLY NEED A LITTLE, GENTLE KICK... + EARTH-IMPACTOR
MITIGATION METHODS (CC)
- 16 Feb 02 Space.com: SPACE-BASED
MISSILE DEFENSE NEEDED TO THWART ASTEROID ATTACKS
- 4 Apr 02 Space.com: A
Homeland Defense for Planet Earth.
- 2001 Tumbling Stone: We
only need a little kick...
- 20 May 04 Space.com: Asteroid
Eaters: Space Rock Hunting Robots That Could Protect Earth
- 2 Jun 05: A Call for (Considered) Action, Russell L.
Schweickart. Abstract,
(Word 2000, 21K) Full
paper, (.pdf, 883K) B612
Foundation. The 2029/2036 "keyhole"
for 2004 MN4 is only 600m across - a small nudge would prevent an
impact in 2036 (if the NEO would otherwise pass through that keyhole)
- 10 Jun 06 Acta Astronautica: A captured asteroid : Our David's stone for shielding earth and providing the cheapest extraterrestrial material
- 18 Feb 07 BBC:
Action plan for killer asteroids
Solar
power/sails:
- "Light
sails" by Henry Harris, Scientific American, February 1999.
- Solar
Sail Homepage.
- "MAINBELT ASTEROID RENDEZVOUS MISSIONS USING SOLAR ELECTRIC
AND SOLAR SAIL PROPULSION" (abstract) by C.
McFarland and M. Leipold, Proceedings of the AAS/AIAA Spaceflight
Mechanics Meeting, February 12-15, 1996, Austin, Texas (AAS
96-167)
- "Solar Sails and Interstellar Space Travel" book by Louis
Friedman, 1987 (out of print).
- "Solar Sailing : Technology, Dynamics and Mission
Applications" book by Colin McInnes, 1999.
- "AsterAnts:
A Concept for Large-Scale Meteoroid Return and Processing using the
International Space Station" by Al Globus, Bryan Biegel and Steve
Traugott.
- "Tacking
solar sails" by Benjamin Diedrich
- SOLAR
SAILING by Eric Drexler
- AIR FORCE
SIGNS BOEING TO BUILD $48 MILLION SOLAR (POWERED) ROCKET.
- 1 Mar 2000 Space.com: Russians
May Hoist Europe's Solar Sail.
- 2 Mar 2000 Space.com: Breakthrough
In Solar Sail Technology.
- 26 May 2000 CNN: Scientists
propose sailing to the stars on solar wind.
- 6 Jun 2000 Space.com: Outer
Space Sailing Ship Unveiled at Aerospace Show.
- 2 Jul 2000 NASA: Setting
Sail for the Stars - with links
- 16 Aug 2000 Seattle Times: Sailing
through space
- 2001: TPS Solar Sail
initiative.
- FOSSILIZED
BACTERIA IN MURCHISON AND EFREMOVKA(Meteorites) by Brig Klyce,
Cosmic
Ancestry.
- FOSSILIZED
LIFE FORMS IN THE MURCHISON METEORITE by by Brig Klyce, Cosmic
Ancestry.
- Contamination of the Murchison Meteorite by Andrew Steele.
30th Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, March 1999,
Houston, Copy available from ADS Abstract
service (search for Murchison).
- Mars
mound might have been built by microbes by Lou Bergeron, New
Scientist . 09.02.99 (copy at Explorezone)
- Picture
of Murchison
Meteorite.
- The
town of Murchison. Treat the meteorite description with caution!
- CCNet
DIGEST, 5 March 1999 SOILS FOR SPACE-BASED AGRICULTURE M.N.
Mautner: Formation, chemistry and fertility of extraterrestrial soils:
Cohesion, water adsorption and surface area of carbonaceous chondrite.
Prebiotic
and space resource applications. ICARUS, 1999, Vol.137, No.1, pp.178-195
- Microbial
mats and stromatolites - NASA
- Bacteria
in the Tatahouine meteorite: nanometric-scale life in rocks
Earth and Planetary Science Letters 175 (2000). 1.6Mb PDF.
- MICROBES
IN A MARTIAN METEORITE? AN UPDATE ON THE CONTROVERSY by Allan
Treiman, Sky & Telescope, April 1999 (at Britannica.com). Also
Treiman's Mars
Meteorite
page .
Updates
- April 2000: The
Microbiological Contamination of Meteorites; A Null Hypothesis by
Andrew Steele,
Astrobiology Conference.
- Stromatolites
- ABC Gardening show!
- 1 Jun 2000: Largest
meteorite find in Canadian history. Uni Calgary
- 29 Mar 01 Space.com: Apollo
Moon Rocks: Dirty Little Secrets - Andrew Steele found a few
earthly organisms having a picnic within lunar samples...
- 14 May 01 Spacedaily: Italian
researchers find traces of life in meteorites - but see cautions
above. Also Space.com.
- 1 Aug 01 Yahoo: Scientists
Claim Evidence of Life in Outer Space (results of Indian rocket
experiments) but they look like
common terrestrial bacteria but there is no explanation of how
they could have risen so high. ``There would have to be
some unusual event which would
take particles from the Earth to a height of 40 kilometers,''
Lloyd
said in a telephone interview. The bacteria could have
hitched
a ride on a rocket or satellite into space or they really could
be from another planet. ``We have no evidence for one or the other as
yet..." BBC: Scepticism
greets 'space bugs' claim + Space.com.
- 1 Oct 01 Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta :Lunar
dust: a negative control for biomarker analyses of extraterrestrial
samples? Some lunar samples appear to be uncontaminated.
- 13 Dec 02 NASA: Researchers
Find Possible Precursors To Early Life On Earth In Tagish Lake Meteorite.
- 13 Feb 03 NAI: Murchison's Amino
Acids: Tainted Evidence?
- Jun 04 SPIE: Biomarkers
and Microfossils in the Murchison, Rainbow, and Tagish Lake meteorites
(abstract)
- 16 Aug 04 CA: Evidence
for indigenous microfossils in a carbonaceous meteorite
- 10 Sep 04 SpaceDaily: Major
Milestone For Detecting Life On Mars - more from Andrew Steele
- 27 Jul 05 GCA (abs): New
pyrolytic and spectroscopic data on Orgueil and Murchison [meteorite]
insoluble
organic matter: A different origin than soluble?
See also Your ancestors may have been Martian
extremophiles and Swapping Rocks.
- Bisei Spaceguard Centre,
Japan + technical
features.
- NASA's
tally of discoveries by observatory.
- Loss of
Near Earth Asteroid 1998 OX4 - NEO News
- Spaceguard
Report - 1992. For a great historical account of the Spaceguard
issue see the "sources" section of Arthur C Clarke's 'The Hammer of
God' (1993). The term "Spaceguard" was coined by Sir Arthur in his 1973
book 'Rendezvous with Rama'.
- "Evaluation
of ground-based optical surveys for near-Earth asteroids", by Alan
W. Harris, Planetary And Space Science (46)2-3 (1998) pp. 283-290. (was
available as PDF until Dec 1999!).
- NEO search programs.
See also NASA's list, with
descriptions. Several are now out of date.
- Report on Spaceguard Australia -
ceased in 1996
- ESA report on
flexi-missions - including the unsuccessful Spaceguard-1
proposal.
- MAP spacecraft proposal has an explanation of
Lagrange Points. - as proposed for Spaceguard-1.
- Alain Maury's assessment
of NEO search programs.
- Major search programs.
- Major follow-up programs.
- Spaceguard in
the new millennium notice of a lecture by Brian Marsden.
- Observatory
Down Under to Help Search for Killer Asteroids
5 August 2000
(alternative title ' Puffball comet puzzles astronomers')
- IAU
Circular 7471
- CometLinear.Com
- NASA
Space Science
- The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes - Press Release
Updates
7 August 2000
For references see Bigger telescopes seek killer
asteroids.
11 August 2000
For references see Chicken Little was right: The sky is
falling
- 5 May 01 Guardian: AS
COOL AS THE COSMOS - want to find extraterrestial material? Try the
sludge in the gutters of your house! (CC)
18 Sep 2000
Also What
Makes An Asteroid Threatening to Earth? and British
Asteroid Report Takes Some of Shine Off the Sydney Olympics.
- UK NEO Task
Group report (700K PDF)
- Reactions
to the report posted on CCNet.
16 May 01
1 Aug 01
- Graph showing timing of major impacts
and eruptions (+ more links)
- 'Oceanic Mega-impacts and crustal evolution' by A. Glikson,
Geology, 27:387-341, May 1999 (+ personal correspondence)
- 'Axial focusing of impact energy in the Earth's interior:
a possible link to flood basalts and hotspots' by M Boslough, E. Chael,
T. Trucano, D.Crawford and D. Campbell, Geological Society of America,
Special Paper 307, 541-550, 1996 (not available online).
- 'Do large impacts strengthen mantle plumes and produce
Komatiites?' by D.
Abbott, Geological Society of America Annual
Meeting 2000, Abstract 50659 (papers not online - see other
relevant papers at that conference by Elkins and Hagstrum)
- 'CAN IMPACTS INDUCE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS?' by H. J. Melosh,' Catastrophic
Events Conference, Vienna, July 2000, Abstract 3144 (PDFs for
downloading)
- 'Impact induced volcanism on Earth: searching for the
evidence' by A.P. Jones,' Catastrophic
Events Conference, Vienna, July 2000, Abstract 3097 (PDFs for
downloading)
- 'Cometary collisions and geological periods' by Harold
Urey Nature Vol 242 p32, 1973.(raises
the possibility of impacts initiating eruptions) - 'Volcanic
Accomplice', by Naomi Lubick, Scientific American, March 2001.
- The July 2001
issue of Scientific American contains a letter to the editor
concerning
an article by Michael Gurnis about "mantle superplumes". In responding
to the letter Gurnis refers to very recent seismic research that
indicates the African superplume begins at the core mantle boundary. It
seems difficult to explain how such a deep structure could be initiated
by an impact with the Earth's crust. This might not be the case,
however, with smaller "hot spots".
- 28 Aug 2001: GSA Permian
Extraterrestrial Impact Caused Largest Mass Extinction on Earth. ...an
asteroid
or a comet hit the ocean at the end of the Permian, triggered a rapid
and
massive release of sulfur from the mantle to the ocean-atmosphere
system,
swooped up a significant amount of oxygen, precipitated acid rain, and
possibly set off large-scale volcanism.
- 9 Oct 01 GSA Abstracts
for Nov
2001 Conference: IMPACT-INDUCED
VOLCANISM: A GEOLOGIC MYTH - more scepticism by Jay Melosh (CC)
- American Geophysical Union 2001 Meeting -
Advances in Modeling Flow Processes: Volcanoes, Floods, Impacts, and
Mass Movements.
- POST-LATE
HEAVY BOMBARDMENT ASTEROID/COMET IMPACT RATES & OCEANIC
MEGA-IMPACTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR EPISODIC CRUSTAL EVOLUTION AND PLATE
TECTONICS -
CCNet essay by Andrew Glikson, 14 May 1999.
- 5 Feb 02 SpaceDaily: A Rising
Force: New Study on Ancient Mantle Plumes.
- 19 Feb 02 BBC: Volcanoes
threaten to divide Africa - A plume of hot volcanic mantle rock
is rising beneath Africa, trying to split the continent apart.
- 9 Dec 02 EPSL: Extraterrestrial
influences on mantle plume activity (abstract)
- 13 Dec 02 New Scientist: Earth's
volcanism linked to meteorite impacts
- 5 Feb 03 Space.com: How
Asteroids Trigger Volcanos
- 19 Mar 03 CCNet: THE BULLET
THEORY: A NEW LINK BETWEEN MASS EXTINCTIONS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR
HUMANKIND.
- 16 May 03 Spacedaily: A Fiery
Debate About
Volcanoes (source of hotspots)
- 29 Jul 03 SpaceDaily; The "Fixed"
Hotspot
That Created Hawaii Not Stationary At All
- 8 Nov 03: MantlePlumes.org
- This website discusses the origin of "hotspot" volcanism.
- 27 Jan 04 Icarus (1994!): Assessment
of Antipodal-Impact Terrains on Mars - thanks Mark Boslough +
LPI91: The
Formation of Antipodal-Impact Terrains on Mars. + LPSC78: Volcanism
Associated with the Hellas Basin of Mars + Antipodal
Effects of Major Basin-Forming Impacts on Mars.
- 29 Jan 04 Brian Shiro has a map showing possible anti-podal
features on Mars.(thanks Adrian Lark)
- 3 Nov 04 AGU Annual Meeting: Antipodal Hotspots
and Bipolar Catastrophes: Were Oceanic Large-Body Impacts to Blame?
- 16 Dec 04 Stanford Uni: Geophysicists debate the cause of hotspots
- 9 Dec 07 New Scientist ($): Did a comet kick-start Earth's plate tectonics? This article is also a good example of the benefits of using the term microplanet for "comets and asteroids".
- Cavicchioli, R., Thomas, T., Saunders, N., Curmi, P.,
Kuczek, E., Slade, R., Davis J. and Mattlick, J. (2000) :Towards the
genome of the psychrophilic archaeon Methanogenium frigidum',
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Small Genomes, 2000.
http://www.micro.unsw.edu.au/rick/arrowhead.html
- Horowitz, N. (1977) 'The Search for Life on Mars',
Scientific American, November 1977.
- Kimball, J. (2001) Is (Was?) there life on Mars, http://www.ultranet.com/~jkimball/BiologyPages/M/Mars.html
- Klein, H.P. (1996) 'On the Search for Extant Life on Mars',
Icarus 120, 431-436, 1996.
- Klein, H.P. (1998) 'The Search for Life on Mars: What we
learned from Viking', J. Geophysical Research Vol 103, No E12
28463-28466, 25 Nov 1998.
- Klein, H.P. (1999) 'Did Viking discover life on Mars?',
Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, 29: 625-631, 1999.
- Levin, G.V. (1997) 'The Viking Labeled Release Experiment
and Life on Mars', Proceedings of SPIE Conference, 1997.
- Levin, G.V. and Straat, P.A. (1977) 'Recent results from the
Viking Labeled Release Experiment on Mars', J. Geophysical Research Vol
82 No 28, 30 Sep 1977.
- Levin, G.V., Kuznetz, L. and Lafleur A. (2000) 'Approaches
to Resolving the Question of Life in Mars', Proceedings of SPIE
Conference, 2000.
- Madigan, M.T. and Marrs B.L. (1997) 'Extromophiles',
Scientific American, April 1997.
- Miller, J.D., Straat, P.A. and Levin G.V. (2001) 'Periodic
Analysis of the Viking Lander Labeled Release Experiment', Proceedings
of SPIE Conference, 2001.
- Scientific American, editors (1977) 'Science and the
Citizen: Ambiguities of Mars', Scientific American, February 1977.
- Space Studies Board (2000) Evaluating the Biological
Potential in Samples Returned from Planetary Satellites and Small Solar
System Bodies, http://www.nas.edu/ssb/sssbch1.htm
- 9 Apr 03 Space.com: Mars
Gullies Could Harbor Martian Biology.
- 8 Jun 04 NAI: Fleshing Out
Martian Proteins.
- 1 Aug 04 Nature: The
search for life on Mars - review of progress.
- 31 Aug 04 NAI: Life
on Mars: A Definite Possibility [does that
mean "possible"]
- 9 May 08 Space.com: Alien Life-Searching Techniques Tested
- IAU Symposium, Sydney, 2003: Thursday July 17 - 7.00 pm - Public forum
with Dr Alan Harris from the Space Science Institute Colorado, Dr
Andrea Milani
from the University of Pisa and Dr David Morrison from the NASA Ames
Research
Center on "The Danger from Space: Are Near Earth Objects a Catastrophe
Waiting
to Happen?" at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre. Talk moderated by
Karl
Kruszelnicki. + Australian
Minor Planet Workshop, Nelson Bay 25-27 July.
- 2 Apr 03 OECD: Dealing with the hazard of asteroids and comets that
collide with the Earth - Report from the workshop, entitled "Near
Earth Objects: Risks, Policies and Actions" held in Frascati, Italy, on
January 20-22, 2003, It brought together leading NEO experts and
government officials to examine the NEO issue as it relates to public
safety.
- Paper
by Clark Chapman.(also a Word DOC version
at Clark's website)
- 14 Jul 03 Space.com: Concerned
Citizens Ask for Congressional Action on Near Earth Objects. The Open
Letter is similar to a letter from
91 scientists sent to the Australian government last year and
several scientists are signatories to both letters.
- Tumbling
Stone article about Keyholes.
Top of page
This page prepared by Michael
Paine,
The
Planetary Society Australian Volunteers
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