Statics, Formfinding and Dynamics of Air-Supported Membrane Structures (Mechanics of Surface Structure)

Book Description

The discovery of the giant Chicxulub impact crater, buried off the coast of Mexico, unveiled the solution to one of Earth's greatest mysteries--what killed the dinosaurs. Scientists uncovered physical evidence to explain the mass extinction that rocked the Earth 65 million years ago. Step-by-step, The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions tells this great scientific detective story. Charles Frankel recounts the birth of the cosmic hypothesis, which holds that the crash of a meteor on the Earth's surface killed two-thirds of life and all the dinosaurs. He first provides a dramatic account of the impact and its aftermath. Frankel then goes on to detail the controversy that preceded the acceptance of the cosmic hypothesis, the search for the crater, its discovery and ongoing exploration, and the effect of the giant impact on the biosphere. In addition, he reviews other mass extinctions in the fossil record and the threat of asteroids and comets to our planet today. More than 70 photographs and diagrams enhance and help illustrate the material. Filled with drama and interesting science, The End of the Dinosaurs will readily appeal to both the general reader fascinated with the subject and the specialist always searching for more clues to this great mystery. Charles Frankel has written a number of articles on the earth sciences in books and magazines. His many books include Volcanoes of the Solar System (Cambridge University Press 1996).

Customer Reviews:

An Excellent, Well-Written Thesis.......2007-07-11

Charles Frankel's book "The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions" is a well-written, thoroughly researched thesis on the theory of a meteor impact that resulted in the mass extinctions of dinosaurs and other species 65 million years ago.

The author requires no prior knowledge of geology, astronomy, archeology, or paleontology. Instead, he carefully outlines all of the accumulated scientific evidence from these fields of science and presents a convincing argument in support of the impact theory as the cause of the mass extinctions documented in the fossil record. He also presents opposing theories and his arguments against them. The book is nicely illustrated with interesting photographs that supplement the salient points of each chapter.

The book is an easy read, especially for a scientific thesis, and is constructed concisely and intuitively, without the repetitiveness often suffered in similar non-fiction works. I enjoyed reading it on vacation in the Caribbean where I was delighted to be able to spot, in some exposed cliffs, the K-T geologic boundary the author describes so well!

I later shared the book with my 14 year old son, who used the book as his primary resource for a school paper on the subject of an important historical event. My son also found the book to be fascinating, lucid, and eminently readable.

I highly recommend this outstanding work of non-fiction.

Informative and Entertaining.......2005-05-23

This book is an entertaining and informative explanation of how scientists posed the theory that an asteriod had caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, found evidence that supported the theory, searched for the crater, and eventually linked the Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula to the extinctions.

This book is also a wonderful illustration of how the scientific process works, what scientific controversy looks like, and how people from many different scientific disciplines can work together to advance knowledge. The author provides enough background information for the lay reader to understand the basic situation, but not so much that the reader gets bogged down in details. With a publication date of 1999, it is perhaps a bit dated, but it is well worth reading.

The End of the Dinosaurs.......2002-11-23

The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions written by Charles Frankel is an account of the hunt for, finding, and the theory and controversy assoicited with the great mass extinction that rocked the Earth 65 million years ago.

This book encompasses some great detective work and recounts the birth of the cosmic hypothesis that the effects of a giant impact created on the eart's biosphere led to the exticntion of one very successful life forms on earth... dinosauria.

The descriptions of the crater geology is in terms that the layperson can understand and comprehend. This is ment to pique your interest into Earth sciences and there is and index and bibliography for further study if warrented.

What I found to be the greatest asset in reading this book is the detective work involve in finding the impact area on earth that coinsided with the correct time frame to prove that the impact of an extraterresstial source was one of the contributing factors that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

There are photos within this book that show impacts throughout the earth, but the only one that can be linked to 65 millions years ago is Chicxulub in the Northern edge of the Yucatan in Mexico. It amazes me how the geologists work and came up with this site. Iridium was only one of the clues that the geologists used to track down the date of tthe impact, but closer to the impact site there were other telltale signs.

Around the Gulf of Mexico, unusual outcrops are found at the K-T boundary. K-T stands for Late Cretaceous-Tertiary begining. In El Penon, Mexico, a thick sandstone unit is interpreted to be a catastrophic tsunami deposit, laid down by the impact. Where it is capped by a fine clay displaying a wavy pattern, thought to mark the oscilation of the current as the tsunami wave sloshed back and forth across the continental platform. When you take a cross-section of the clay you can really see the the ripple marks, making testament to the current switching directions.

From Mexico, to Haiti and around the Gulf of Mexico you see this clay layer and sandstone around the K-T boundary denoting an impact, but what really piqued my interest here was the fine of the ejecta known as spherules and tektites. Tektites are spashes of the impact melt that take on aerodynamic shapes as they spin through the Earth's atmosphere.

On a different note... why are comet more dangerous to Earth than asteroid... because of the sublimation of the ices heated by sunlight. The jets of gas act as reactors and constantly modify the comet's trajectory. Thus, making comets less predictable than asteroids.

This book takes the reader on a journey into Earth Science and shows us what can happen... fascinating what asteroids, meteorites, bolides and comets can do to the rich complexity of the biosphere, not only then, but today as well.

Great Little Book.......2002-05-27

This great little book is far more than promised by the title -- although I must admit that I grabbed it because of the title, so I can hardly fault them for picking something dinosaur oriented.

Yes, we get a history of the scientific controversies leading to the widespread acceptance of a meteorite/comet strike as the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs. But there's more: the book reviews the evidence for associations between bolide strikes and all of the major mass extinctions in earth history. In prose that's clear, but not dry, Frankel reveals what we know -- and don't know -- about these events. Good illustrations and intelligent speculation round out a first-rate and quite up-to-date overview of a rapidly developing field.

One subtext of Frankel's work is how scientist adapt (and in some cases don't adapt) to new evidence. For example, the Siberian Tunguska explosion of 1908 is now widely acknowledged to have been a strike from a comet fragment, but only 20 or so years ago you could read about it primarily in UFO magazines and "mysteries of the unexplained" books. Because science lacked an explanation for it, the explosion was largely ignored.

I second the recommendation of "The Eternal Frontier."

End of the Dinosaurs........2000-04-11

So many theories of the KT extinctions have been forwarded by scientist and lay person alike that it is almost refreshing to have it come down to the confrontation between two, or a few, major theories, in this case the "impactist" and "volcanist" theories. Frankel does a fine job of presenting a balanced and fair account of the contenting theories, particularly Courtillot's Deccan Traps volcanism (for which see Evolutionary Catastrophies or my review of it) and their supporting data. He is, however, thoroughly in the impactist camp. He gives an excellent description of the astroid and of how scientists were able to work out its size, the size of its crater, and its subsequent atmospheric and environmental effects. This is probably the best of the three books (T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, Evolutionary Catastrophies, and End of the Dinosaurs) I've recently read on the subject, although all three are worth reading.

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Fabulous
Fascinating
Mr. Rex and his pointless facility
This subject isn't written in stone - yet
This is the one that started it all...

T. rex and the Crater of Doom
Walter Alvarez
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0691016305

Amazon.com

One of the great mysteries is what happened to the dinosaurs, and it has taken great detective work to give us an answer. In T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, some brilliant, not to mention determined, scientists roam the world and seek out the clues. What they conclude is that the earth withstood a colossal impact with a meteor (or perhaps a comet) 65 million years ago. The resulting cataclysm destroyed half the life on the planet.

Walter Alvarez, a geologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and one of the four scientists who present this theory on the mystery, tells the story in a clear narrative that contains a wealth of scientific material. The book does require an investment of attention, but the presentation is quite readable, and the story itself is fascinating.

Book Description

Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mt. Everest slammed into the Earth, causing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized impactor and debris from the impact site were blasted out through the atmosphere, falling back to Earth all around the globe. Terrible environmental disasters ensued, including a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the genera of plants and animals on Earth had perished.

This horrific story is now widely accepted as the solution to a great scientific murder mystery what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? In T. rex and the Crater of Doom, the story of the scientific detective work that went into solving the mystery is told by geologist Walter Alvarez, one of the four Berkeley scientists who discovered the first evidence for the giant impact. It is a saga of high adventure in remote parts of the world, of patient data collection, of lonely intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of intense public debate, of friendships made or lost, of the exhilaration of discovery, and of delight as a fascinating story unfolded.

Controversial and widely attacked during the 1980s, the impact theory received confirmation from the discovery of the giant impact crater it predicted, buried deep beneath younger strata at the north coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Chicxulub Crater was found by Mexican geologists in 1950 but remained almost unknown to scientists elsewhere until 1991, when it was recognized as the largest impact crater on this planet, dating precisely from the time of the great extinction sixty-five million years ago. Geology and paleontology, sciences that long held that all changes in Earth history have been calm and gradual, have now been forced to recognize the critical role played by rare but devastating catastrophes like the impact that killed the dinosaurs.

Customer Reviews:

Fabulous.......2007-05-03

Don't know what else to say. If you like geology, science, natural history, dinosaurs,... any of the above? Read it!

Fascinating.......2006-08-25

Great account of the evolution of the meteor impact theory of mass extinction. He provides a detailed account of the scientific processes involved in the discovery of the Chixulub crater and its relation to the end of the Cretaceous period. As a scientist in another field, I found it to be very informative for the lay reader (non-paleontologist/geologist, etc.).

Mr. Rex and his pointless facility.......2006-06-10

So, our temporarily old Mr. Rex sees that a book consisting entirely of combat will show you a hill that floats! Not since 1937. "In such a long time, he thinks that it really develops in circumference, which is all it will ever be." So he says, anyway. Sadly, this stuff used to be quite numerous in the market and he (the author) was different from what he says he is today, when the book is no longer being sold. How sad. This dog will cry and cry as you try to head off the exposure of this author who is far more different than you can imagine. Let him prove the contents of his own book and then let's see him leave some petal larger than itself, and maybe in some interview with temporary old Mr. Rex and his floating hill, we will see that it is time to increase the form of our philosophy, which might eventually rehabilitate objective analysis. Yes, sure, that will be the day! Then how come nobody thought to be careful in their principal object, which might be found at the very end of the book. You, along with "old" Mr. Rex, will discover this book to be indispensible if you care about profit and loss, like the author(s). Like his hill, he floats under the thought, not over it, and when he wants the growth, he extends himself laterally.

To read this book cover to cover is to be astonished about rumors of its re-publication. But, to date, the remainder piles burst any hope of a revision. The sly old dog inside the bookshop actually hopes that BallentineBooks will try to publish each one, page by page, as a "real" book made up of 256 versions of the same small page. Your risk of testing your confidence in it is minimal. As a reading device, it compares well with Dick and Jane books in terms of profit and loss or some other pointless facility. At one point he even compares gold and the chart, together. This is what he calls "being rehabilitated," and it modifies the entire thing. The critics spoke about the fact that he defends his track record as some kind of "interior research", when in fact it is a plain old criminal record, the risks of which we will all have to carry together. If he wishes to make his company legitimate, maybe this book can be in a company of one.

This subject isn't written in stone - yet .......2006-04-25

I started reading Vincent Courtillot's Evolutionary Catastrophes (volcanism) first in order to gain a handle on the mass extinction argument and found that this book challenges Walter Alvarez's book T. Rex And The Crater of Doom (comet or asteroid bombardment). Therefore, I started reading that at the same time; which got me to pull out and start skimming David Levy's Impact Jupiter (comet expert). In the meantime, I thought it prudent to start reading The Behavior of the Earth by Claude Allegre (plate tectonics), and picked up Steven Stanley's book Extinction (global climate change). Recently I saw via a Google search that Linda Elkins-Tanton now thinks that perhaps meteorite bombardment could have allowed hot magma to vent thus causing global climate change and hence the mass extinctions. This is fun!

This is the one that started it all..........2005-12-01

This is the book that started it all: Dinosaur extinction by bolide from outer space. Catastrophic tsunamis. Intercontinental ejecta layer. Geologic evidence everywhere you look once you know where to look. And the laughingstock of serious geologists everywhere until the evidence started mounting up to where it couldn't be ignored.

This is the story of Walter Alvarez and his colleagues and their careful science that yielded ideas, insights, and then, whammo! the Big Idea that there might be an external component to the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It is a forensic mystery worthy of "CSI" except this is the real deal, and the slog work of doing research took this band of scientists all over the world in search of enlightenment. Leveraging new developments in dating techniques and the best minds in the field and out of it (did I mention that Walter Alvarez is the son of Luis Alvarez, the Nobel Award winner for physics?), the adventure is somewhat stalled until the discovery of oil company drilling cores from the Chixulub region of Mexico that confirm evidence of an impact in that region. It is an eleventh-hour discovery just as interest is waning and funding is running out - a development worthy of the "Nova" episode that it eventually became.

As much fun as it is to read mysteries, it is equally fun to read about the real-life trials and tribulations of a band of intrepid individuals who have a hypothesis and then are able to methodically test it, with startling results. One of the joys of this book is Alvarez's generosity toward those whose work supported him and propelled him forward, as well as his occasional head-scratching humility. This really isn't a vanity piece but it is a definite good read.

The Structure and Dynamics of Materials in the Mesoscopic Domain: Proceedings of the Fourth Royal Society-Unilever Indo-Uk Forum in Materials Science and Engineering

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The Structure and Dynamics of Materials in the Mesoscopic Domain: Proceedings of the Fourth Royal Society-Unilever Indo-Uk Forum in Materials Science and Engineering
Royal Society-Unilever Indo-Uk Forum in Materials Science and engineer
Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
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Analytical Surface Deformation Theory: for Detection of the Earth's Crust Movements

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Analytical Surface Deformation Theory: for Detection of the Earth's Crust Movements
Yüksel Altiner
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 3540658203

Book Description

The high accuracy achievable using space techniques (VLBI, SLR, GPS) requires rethinking of the theoretical foundations of deformation analysis to be applied. If the results of a deformation analysis are to be useful as initial data based on physical or dynamic models, which generally can be assumed, they have to refer to the physical surface of the Earth (topography). This requires a representation of the Earth's surface as a generally curved surface that is embedded in three-dimensional Euclidian space. This book presents an analytical surface deformation theory to describe movement of the Earth's crust with application to the velocities derived on the basis of GPS observations in the area of the Adriatic Sea and illustrates some local connections between deformations and stresses.

Dynamic Properties of Interfaces and Association Structures

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Dynamic Properties of Interfaces and Association Structures
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Dynamics in Small Confining Systems II: Symposium Held November 28-December 1, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A (Materials Research Society Symposium)

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Dynamics in Small Confining Systems II: Symposium Held November 28-December 1, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A (Materials Research Society Symposium)

Manufacturer: Materials Research Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Dynamics in Small Confining Systems IV: Symposium Held November 30-December 3, 1998, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A (Materials Research Society Symposia Proceedings, V. 543.)

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Dynamics in Small Confining Systems IV: Symposium Held November 30-December 3, 1998, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A (Materials Research Society Symposia Proceedings, V. 543.)

Manufacturer: Materials Research Society
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Dynamics in Small Confining Systems: Symposium Held November 30-December 4, 1992, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings)

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Dynamics in Small Confining Systems: Symposium Held November 30-December 4, 1992, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings)
J. M. Drake , J. Klafter , and R. Kopelman
Manufacturer: Materials Research Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Faraday Discussions Vol. 129: Dynamics and Structure of the Liquid-Liquid Interface (Faraday Discussions 2005)

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Faraday Discussions Vol. 129: Dynamics and Structure of the Liquid-Liquid Interface (Faraday Discussions 2005)

Manufacturer: Royal Society of Chemistry
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 0854049789

Book Description

This volume addresses the distinct approaches that have been taken to study liquid-liquid interfaces. The underlying theme is the convergence of the diverse experimental and computational approaches that have been pursued to understand structure dynamics and transport phenomena associated with liquid-liquid interfaces. Work is presented in the following areas; theory and simulation of liquid-liquid interfaces; spectroscopic and structural studies of the liquid-liquid interface; kinetic and thermodynamics of transfer across interfacial boundaries; charge transfer processes; bio-mimetic systems; fundamental aspects and applications of emulsions; and applications of liquid-liquid processes including metal deposition solvent extraction drug delivery and two-phase synthesis. Faraday Discussions document a long-established series of Faraday Discussion meetings which provide a unique international forum for the exchange of views and newly acquired results in developing areas of physical chemistry biophysical chemistry and chemical physics. The papers presented are published in the Faraday Discussion volume together with a record of the discussion contributions made at the meeting. Faraday Discussions therefore provide an important record of current international knowledge and views in the field concerned.

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