{"id":521,"date":"2019-02-10T15:13:10","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T15:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/?p=521"},"modified":"2019-02-10T15:13:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T15:13:10","slug":"cosmic-impact-out-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/cosmic-impact-out-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosmic Impact – out now!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Cosmic<\/figure>\n\n\n

Following in the footsteps of Destination Mars<\/em>, my second contribution to the Hot Science series has just been published by Icon Books. It\u2019s called Cosmic Impact: Understanding the Threat to Earth from Asteroids and Comets<\/em>, and here is what the publishers say about it:<\/p>\n

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As end-of-the-world scenarios go, an apocalyptic collision with an asteroid or comet is the new kid on the block, gaining respectability only in the last decade of the 20th century with the realisation that the dinosaurs had been wiped out by just such an impact.<\/p>\n

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Now the science community is making up for lost time, with worldwide efforts to track the thousands of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, and plans for high-tech hardware that could deflect an incoming object from a collision course \u2013 a procedure depicted, with little regard for scientific accuracy, in several Hollywood movies.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Astrophysicist and science writer Andrew May disentangles fact from fiction in this fast-moving and entertaining account, covering the nature and history of comets and asteroids, the reason why some orbits are more hazardous than others, the devastating local and global effects that an impact event would produce, and \u2013 more optimistically \u2013 the way future space missions could avert a catastrophe.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cosmic Impact<\/em> is available either as a paperback or an ebook from all the usual places. If you\u2019re an Amazon customer, here are some quick links for you:<\/p>\n