Ebook: Physics and Chemistry of Comets

As this excellent book demonstrates, the study of comets has now reached the fas­ cinating stage where we understand comets in general simple tenns while, at the same time, we are uncertain about practically all the details of cometary nature, structure, processes, and origin. In every aspect, even including dynamics, a choice among several or many competing theories is made impossible simply by the lack of detailed knowledge. The space missions, snapshot studies of two comets, partic­ ularly the one that immortalizes the name of Sir Edmund Halley, have produced a huge mass of valuable new infonnation and a number of surprises. Nonetheless, we face the tantalizing realization that we have obtained only a fleeting glance at two of perhaps a hundred billion (lOll) or more comets with possibly differing natures, origins, and physical histories. To my personal satisfaction, comets seem to have discrete nuclei made up of dirty snowballs, as I concluded four decades ago, but perhaps they are more like frozen rubbish piles.

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The space-age view of cometary physics and chemistry is dealt with in this book. Physics and Chemistry of Comets presents in detail our current knowledge of comets based on the scientific data from the spacecraft missions of 1986 to Halley's comet. Nucleus, neutral coma, plasma, dust, and the origin and evolution of comets are treated in eight carefully edited chapters written by leading experts in the field. Advanced students and researchers in space physics, planetology, geophysics and cosmochemistry will find this an authoritative, longstanding reference source.