Ebook Download | Michael Carroll, "Drifting on Alien Winds: Exploring the Skies and Weather of Other Worlds" | What a wonderful way to surf the winds of other planets while learning mind-boggling facts about the zoo of atmospheres spread across our solar system. Without an atmosphere, our planet would be nearly or totally barren. It provides the oxygen we humans and all other animals must breathe, and the carbon dioxide all plants need to be able to grow. An atmosphere bombards us with dynamic weather, sometimes violent, sometimes beautiful, and so often awe-inspiring. The planets being discovered around other stars, the so-called exo-planets, are of very special interest when they have an atmosphere, but because they are so far away, it is the atmospheres within our own solar system which we can study well today.
Alien Winds captures all this in text and abundant space photographs, highlighted by numerous spectacular paintings by the author himself. There are no equations and no distracting excursions into the extremely tenuous "atmospheres" of Mercury or the moon. Instead, all the sensible atmospheres and their phenomena are described and explained in the clear, concise language we have come to expect from Carroll.
The book is organized by planet and moon, so that the reader may dive into a chapter or simply read bits of it at a time. Always captivating, the facts are enlivened by short interviews with leading planetary scientists to capture in their own words the science and excitement of their discoveries. Spacecraft missions - past, present and future - are described in overview style to reveal how these new discoveries have come about and how exploration will be done in the future. Nowhere else will you find such kaleidoscopic coverage of atmospheres, from the hell-hole of Venus to the blue orb of Neptune. The gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and ice giants (Uranus and Neptune) are described extensively.
Martian dust devils can be the prelude to periodic giant, globe-encircling dust storms. Yet, this vast desert may once have hosted a much thicker atmosphere which could have permitted large bodies of water to exist at the surface. In a simple diagram of the volcanic and tectonic cycles on Earth and Mars, Carroll shows how Mars' atmosphere may have dwindled inexorably to the sparse one we see today. Titan, which orbits around Saturn and is the largest moon in the solar system, has a spectacular atmosphere with abundant methane ("natural gas") and even lakes of methane ("liquefied natural gas"). With its low gravity and dense atmosphere, an airplane could fly at very low speeds on Titan, but to keep airborne in the much thinner martian atmosphere, it must fly with rocket power. The author not only clarifies these phenomena on alien worlds but explains how they relate to weather and climate on our own planet. In a time when the public has become more skeptical of the importance of climate change, these examples drive home the reality that atmospheres can evolve to very different states with profound consequences to the environment at the surface of the planet they encircle.
This book is a delight just for the fascinating facts in the text, but at the same time enlightens our understanding and intrigues our interest with the abundant colorful photos and art work.
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