Stardust to Planets: a Geological Tour of the Solar System

An introduction to the geology of the solar system offers an anecdotal approach that answers questions about the physical makeup of planets, moons, and other celestial bodies

McSween gives new life to the standard "Grand Tour" of astronomy by keeping his eyes on the rocks--the geologic facts of the solar system. As Voyager and other satellite space probes , functioning like electronic geologists, send back electronic information about planetary bodies, the author and other planet scientists have analyzed the data. Head of the Geological Sciences department at the University of Tennessee, McSween avoids the temptation to use these shards of information as any sort of "cosmologist's stone" to advance a vision of the origins of the universe, although his few generalizations line up with the Big Bang theory. This well-written report from a working planetary scientist achieves his goal of demonstrating how "geologic perspective can provide a new understanding of our cosmic neighborhood." It offers an enlightening balance to the spate of books by theoretical physicists and cosmologists.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Comet dirt, magma oceans, meteorites from Mars--all the extraterrestrial grit and goop that geologists love--brought wittily down to earth. McSween (Geological Sciences/Univ. of Tennessee) picks subjects that might ordinarily numb most readers--the regolith, or loose mantle of rock and dust on the moon; volcanism on the Jovian moon of Io, etc.--and then proves that a dash of humor, a pound of anecdote, and a ton of crystalline explication can turn lead into gold. He notes, for instance, how books about the solar system are usually organized, either by planetary size or distance from the sun, and then ferrets out more unusual possibilities: Why not by temperature (Uranus is mysteriously cool) or shape (Saturn has a strangely rocky core) or density (``Saturn would float in water, if you could find a big enough bathtub'')? With similar panache, McSween uses a corker from Yogi Berra (``you can observe a lot by just watching'') to sum up the history of our understanding of geologic time scales on the moon. The Giotto spacecraft's flyby of Halley's comet (a ``sixteen-by-eight-by-eight kilometer potato'') raises the question ``Could you eat a comet''? The answer is no- -comets are indeed ``dirty snowballs,'' but too dirty for consumption. McSween's froth never obscures his lessons, each of which delivers key facts and concludes with an annotated bibliography. Also covered are the mysteries of volcanism on Neptune's moon Triton (the latter, as the coldest object in the solar system, is an odd place for volcanoes); the creation of diamonds in supernovas; the core composition of Earth-like planets; the fate of Mars's once-abundant water (locked into permafrost and the polar caps); the mineralogy of asteroids and planetary rings; and the origins of life on Earth (McSween plumps for the organic soup theory). As energetic as Sagan, without the pontificating; once McSween finds a richer theme, the moon's the limit. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This delightful book by the author of Meteorites and Their Parent Planets (Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1987) provides a geological look at meteorites, asteroids, the lunar crust, and other cosmic stuff. Topics range from minuscule diamonds found in meteorites to magma oceans that once existed on the moon. McSween's lively, often witty accounts are replete with anecdotes related to various discoveries. His book is less technical and more eclectic than most books dealing with planetary geology. Recommended for public library science collections.
- Joesph Hannibal, Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.