Publisher |
McGraw Hill Education |
Publication Year |
2002 |
ISBN-13 |
9780071372244 |
ISBN-10 |
0071372245 |
Binding |
Hardcover |
Number of Pages |
231 Pages |
Language |
(English) |
Weight (grms) |
635 |
On the morning of June 30, 1908, a fireball cascaded down the Siberian sky and exploded with 2000 times the force of the nuclear blast that devastated Hiroshima, Japan. Weighing some 100,000 metric tons, the cosmic missile cut into the atmosphere and shattered in a rapid series of bursts, felling trees and incinerating an area of 2150 square miles - now known as the Tunguska "event." In the spring of 1992, Roy Gallant was invited by the Siberian branch of the National Academy of Sciences to take part in the annual Tunguska Expedition, to investigate this largest meteorite explosion in human history. The first American to participate in this expedition, Gallant thus began his mission as meteorite hunter. From Tunguska, he has since explored the major impact craters of Russia, including: Sikhote-Alin, a strewn field site infested with venomous snakes, brown bears, and Siberian tigers; the site of the famous Pallas Meteorite (namesake for the pallasite class of meteorites); and the enormous Popigai crater. Exploded some 30-40 million years ago, the Popigai crater is 100 kilometers in diameter, similar to the Chicxulub crater event that wiped out the dinosaurs in a planet-wide catastrophe
Roy Gallant
Professor Emeritus Roy A. Gallant has been digging around in Siberian meteorite impact sites for the past decade. Director of the Southworth Planetarium at the University of Southern Maine, Gallant has taught astronomy at his home university, the Maine College of Art, for twentyyears. He was formerly a member of the faculty of New York's Hayden Planetarium. His many books on science and astronomy have earned him the John Burroughs Award for nature writing and the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation award for science writing, and a lifetime achievement award from the Maine Library Association. A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of London and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, Gallant makes his home in Rangeley, Maine.
Roy Gallant
McGraw Hill Education