Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the First Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue
- Chapter 1 A brief history
- Chapter 2 The universe
- Chapter 3 Stars
- Chapter 4 The solar nebula
- Chapter 5 Composition and chemical evolution of the solar nebula
- Chapter 6 The evidence from meteorites
- Chapter 7 Building planets
- Chapter 8 The giant planets
- Chapter 9 Satellites and rings
- Chapter 10 The refugees
- Chapter 11 The survivors: Mercury and Mars
- Chapter 12 The twins: Venus and the Earth
- Chapter 13 The Moon
- Chapter 14 The role of impacts
- Chapter 15 Epilogue: on the difficulty of making Earth-like planets
- Name index
- Subject index
Preface to the Second Edition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the First Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue
- Chapter 1 A brief history
- Chapter 2 The universe
- Chapter 3 Stars
- Chapter 4 The solar nebula
- Chapter 5 Composition and chemical evolution of the solar nebula
- Chapter 6 The evidence from meteorites
- Chapter 7 Building planets
- Chapter 8 The giant planets
- Chapter 9 Satellites and rings
- Chapter 10 The refugees
- Chapter 11 The survivors: Mercury and Mars
- Chapter 12 The twins: Venus and the Earth
- Chapter 13 The Moon
- Chapter 14 The role of impacts
- Chapter 15 Epilogue: on the difficulty of making Earth-like planets
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
My purpose in writing this book is to enquire into the solar system and how it came to be. So much progress has been made in the past decade that this book has been completely rewritten from the first edition. The seven large chapters in that edition have been restructured into fifteen smaller ones that deal more readily with the increased flood of information.
As in the first edition, I have tried to place the solar system in the broader context of the universe. My excuse for venturing into fields such as cosmology is to reinforce the point that the solar system is a relative newcomer in the universe and came about through a fortunate sequence of chance events. A secondary purpose is to try to overcome the narrow and potentially hazardous specialization that is endemic in science and that I talk about in the Prologue. I have attempted to educate myself in fields remote from my own through discussions with many colleagues, listed in the Acknowledgments.
The book does not follow the usual descriptive arrangement of starting with Mercury and marching stolidly out through the giant planets to Pluto. Instead, the unconventional arrangement I have adopted here has arisen naturally as I have tried to explain how the system arose from the solar nebula and why the various bodies happen to be where they are. The result is that there are many associations that may at first sight seem surprising.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Solar System EvolutionA New Perspective, pp. xix - xxiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001