Overview

Full Product Details

9780387479361

Table of Contents

Reviews

"From the reviews: ""Unmasking Europa … brings you face to face with the surface scars of this tiny Jovian moon and tells the story of how our scientific understanding of this enigmatic world has developed. … Through clear descriptions of unfamiliar terms, usefully annotated diagrams, and beautiful colour plates, the story of Europa is made accessible to anyone, even without a prior knowledge of planetary science."" (Emily Baldwin, The Observatory, Vol. 129 (1210), June, 2009) ""The icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa, cut by dramatic faults and other irregularities, caps a hidden ocean about 100 kilometers deep. Greenberg (planetary sciences, Univ. of Arizona) believes the crust is relatively thin … . his explanations of how tides influenced the Europan crust are generally elegant and interesting. The book includes a few Web sites with images of Europa. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates, two-year technical program students, and general readers."" (B. M. Simonson, Choice, Vol. 46 (8), April, 2009) ""The book is a very clear and accessible exposition of the Europa observations, and of how movements of the ice crust could have produced them. … the author is gratified that his ‘thin-ice’ model of Europa is now gaining credence, which may well indicate, as he believes, that correct arguments must ultimately win over the scientific community. … this book can be recommended as a good non-technical synopsis of our present understanding of the satellite … ."" (Journal of the British Astronomical Association, April, 2009) ""It is written by Richard Greenberg … . His arguments that the thick ice interpretation on Europa is flawed sound convincing … . The new book is stripped of much of the mathematical and geologic terminology used in the original in order to reach a wider audience. … the author is spending more time describing the process of discovery of Europa’s secrets."" (Unmanned Spaceflight, October, 2008) ""Centauri Dreams readers already know of my admiration for Richard Greenberg’s … Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter’s Ocean Moon(Copernicus). It’s a lively and challenging book, one which Greenberg used to take sharp issue with many of his colleagues, and … when I reviewed the book, the animated back and forth makes for a fascinating look at how planetary science gets done. … Read Unmasking Europa for a close look at the Europan surface as seen through Voyager and Galileo imagery … ."" (Centauri Dreams, October, 2009) “This book … recounts the fierce friction between the personalities leading the Galileo mission and publishing their interpretations of what they saw. … the story-telling is first-rate and elegantly explains not just the processes at work on this intriguing little world but also the rivalries and political manoeuvring of Big Science. … Unmasking Europa is a gripping story of the exploration of a new world and the often heated debates within science, and is absolutely stuffed with gorgeous images of strange Europan landscapes.” (Lewis Dartnell, Astrobiological Society of Britain, March, 2009)"

From the reviews: <p> In Unmasking Europa, planetary scientist Richard Greenberg details in depth our geological understanding of the tidally tormented icy surface of Europa. Without pulling any punches, he also describes the equally tormented scientific debate that has led to the current cannon... Greenberg succeeds in conveying a story, not of heroes and villains, but about the rise and fall of ideas and how some become accepted for reasons that perhaps go beyond empirical support... In his latest work, he delivers an accessible and well-laid-out popular-science treatment in which the political narrative is more pertinent... Unmasking Europa provides a comprehensive and engaging account of Europa's past and present, and sets the stage for the many questions that will be answered by future missions as we continue our search for life beyond Earth. (Kevin P. Hand, Nature, 22 January 2009) <p> What lies beneath Europa's icy crust? Richard Greenberg has been pondering this question for 30-odd years. His new book, Unmasking Europa, describes his view that Europa's hidden ocean and the life forms it may support are not that far below the surface. A professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Greenberg was one of the first to formulate how tidal forces could shape the geology on Jovian moons. He got the opportunity to test his ideas as a member of the imaging team on NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. During several flybys, Galileo took hundreds of snapshots of the moon Europa, showing a surface covered with dark spots and crisscrossing lines. In his new book, Greenberg walks readers through the Europa photo gallery like acurator in an art museum. He interprets the meaning of these wonderful images and recounts how he and his colleagues came to see Europa's strange features as evidence that the outer crust is a thin layer of ice riding over a deep ocean. This is not the mainstream opinion, however. Most scientists who study Europa believe the ice is much thicker: tens of kilometers as opposed to only a few kilometers. In the course of defending his minority position, Greenberg blames the hierarchical structure of big science projects for creating a politically-motivated thick ice cabal that refused to go back on its initial interpretations even when later data seemed to contradict them... With all the evidence in the book for thin ice, why do most planetary scientists continue to support a thick crust interpretation?... Greenberg says that Galileo's team leaders decided prematurely that Europa had thick ice, and afterwards it became politically advantageous to toe that line. A cautious resistance to paradigm shifts is reasonable when a model has been serving well. But the isolated-ocean model for Europa had become the canonical paradigm for all the wrong reasons... (Michael Schirber, NASA Astrobiology Magazine, December 15, 2008) <p>.,. The book offers detailed views of the moon's grooved rafts of ice and scalloped faults. The Tortured landscape arises from Jupiter's tidal forces, which relentlessly strain the icea weird physics that Greenberg vividly describes. His team is convinced that water or slush gurgles close to the surface, percolating through faults in ice less than 10 kilometers thick. In contrast, the leaders of Galileoa (TM)s imaging teams favor a thicker shell that isolates the ocean.This dispute forms the heart of the book. Ita (TM)s a fascinating issue that affects plans for future missions to probe for Europan lifea ] Greenberg thinks the thick-ice model is full of holes. In his view, it gained a fervent following not on merit, but because of the political power invested in the team leaders by NASA. This compelling tale deserves an airing. Greenberg makes important points about NASAa (TM)s zest for showy news and quick interpretations, and he criticizes the agency for letting archived data languisha ] (Robert Irion, Sky & Telescope, March 2009)

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available