Product Description: Presents a realistic, workable plan for defusing a potentially lethal threat from a rogue asteroid or comet. The explosion of a large meteor over Chelyabinsk, Siberia, in February 2013 is just the latest reminder that planet Earth is vulnerable to damaging and potentially catastrophic collisions with space debris of various kinds...read more

The biological effects of asteroid and comet impacts have been widely viewed as primarily destructive. The role of an impactor in the K/T boundary extinctions has had a particularly important influence on thinking concerning the role of impacts in ecological and biological changes. th During the 10 and final workshop of the ESF IMPACT program during March 2003, we sought to investigate the wider aspects of the involvement of impact events in biological processes, including the beneficial role of these events from the prebiotic through to the ecosystem level. The ESF IMPACT programme (1998-2003) was an interdisciplinary effort that is aimed at understanding impact processes and their effects on the Earth environment, including environmental, geological and biological changes. The IMPACT programme has 15 member states and the activities of the programme range from workshops to short courses on topics such as impact stratigraphy, shock metamorphism, etc. The program has also awarded mobility grants and been involved in the development of teaching aids and numerous publications, including this one.

This account argues that the Earth has undergone several catastrophic encounters with comets and their debris in the last five millennia, with mythology preserving the story better than history.

A thought-provoking study of the asteroids, comets, and other near-Earth objects that threaten the planet examines the potentially devastating consequences of a collision between Earth and space objects and discusses efforts by scientists to detect, predict, and prevent such catastrophes. 20,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Starting with the flood legends of the North Eurasian peoples and the Deluge traditions of the great civilizations from antiquity, the author explains the world-wide cosmic catastrophe that mankind experienced around 10,000 years ago on the basis of the latest scientific disclosures...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)