Everyone knows that when the great ball of fire appears in the sky it brings bad luck - except Edmond Halley. But who will believe him if he reveals the truth? This story spans the history of Halley's comet from 1066 into the 21st century and shows how science has explained superstition.
Mad scientist Dr. Alowishus Cobalt is out to destroy the planet. Using his own invention, he has caused a comet to switch paths and head toward Earth! Dr. I.N. Stein and Colonel Bragg call on the members of the Kid Squad - Pi, Athena, Gadget, and Tank, along with their trusty cat D-Day - to save the world from destruction. Will they be able to track down Dr. Cobalt and send the comet back to its original orbit? Or will Earth end up, as Dr. Stein says, kaput? Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Calico is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO.
Everyone knows that when the great ball of fire appears in the sky it brings bad luck - except Edmond Halley. But who will believe him if he reveals the truth? This story spans the history of Halley's comet from 1066 into the 21st century and shows how science has explained superstition.
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mount Everest slammed into the Earth, inducing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized detritus blasted through the atmosphere upon impact, falling back to Earth around the globe. Disastrous environmental consequences ensued: a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the plant and animal genera on Earth had perished. This horrific chain of events is now widely accepted as the solution to a great scientific mystery: what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Walter Alvarez, one of the Berkeley scientists who discovered evidence of the impact, tells the story behind the development of the initially controversial theory. It is a saga of high adventure in remote locations, of arduous data collection and intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of friendships made and lost, and of the exhilaration of discovery that forever altered our understanding of Earth's geological history.
One dawn, a fiery comet appears over the city. The Great Emperor Montezuma commands Chantico's uncle, the soothsayer, Ahcambal, to explain the meaning of it. When Ahcambal cannot come up with an answer, he is thrown into prison to be executed. What can Chantico do to save his uncle? Luckily, Chantico is not an ordinary boy - he has the gift of second sight. He uses his own skills to come up with a cunning plan to save his Uncle. But can he do it in time?
David Levy brings these "ghostly apparitions" to life. With fascinating scenarios both real and imagined, he shows how comets have wreaked their special havoc on Earth and other planets. Beginning with ground zero as comets take form, we track the paths their icy, rocky masses take around our universe and investigate the enormous potential that future comets have to directly affect the way we live on this planet and what we might find as we travel to other planets. In this extraordinary volume, David Levy shines his expert light on a subject that has long captivated our imaginations and fears, and demonstrates the need for our continued and rapt attention.
Patrick Moore is Britain's most respected and best-loved astronomer. In Countdown! he examines the multifarious theories of how and when the world will end, from St Augustine to the Millennium Bug, via Nostradamus. With a healthy dose of irreverent humour, he investigates and dismisses the weird and wonderful predictions of sometimes imminent cataclysm, before turning to the science of what might really happen (a long, long time in the future, thankfully). Written with his trademark combination of wit and accessible science, and updated to include the latest theories on asteroids and climate change, this is a must-read book for anyone with an interest in popular science in general, and how the world might end in particular.