From Stone to Star: View of Modern Geology - Tapa dura

Alle gre takes the reader on a fascinating voyage of discovery through the simple layered sedimentary strata of the top few kilometers of the Earth to the depths of its core and then out to the farthest limits of space...A book like this, which aims to place the Earth (and the Earth sciences) in a cosmological context, has been long overdue; "From Stone to Star" deserves a wide readership. -- Martin Whitehouse "Times Higher Education Supplement" Allegre takes the reader on a fascinating voyage of discovery through the simple layered sedimentary strata of the top few kilometers of the Earth to the depths of its core and then out to the farthest limits of space...A book like this, which aims to place the Earth (and the Earth sciences) in a cosmological context, has been long overdue; "From Stone to Star" deserves a wide readership.--Martin Whitehouse "Times Higher Education Supplement " Highly readable and deeply informative...An excellent introduction to the exciting geohistorical discoveries made in recent decades...it will serve alike the needs of the geologist and the general reader.--Gordon L. Herries Davies "Nature " In twenty-two years of reading Earth science books, I have encountered many superlatives of writing. A few names that pop to mind are John McPhee, Isaac Asimov, and Stephen Gould. To these established authors I would like to add Claude Allegre--literate, lucid, fun to read, exciting, and a great scientist..."From Stone to Star" is an intelligent, informative, wonderful book.--William C. Philips "Science Teacher "

"From Stone to Star" chronicles one of the great scientific adventures of our time. Written by the geochemist Claude Allegre, it offers a glimpse into the sophisticated isotopic detective work that has established a geologic chronology of the earth and transformed our understanding of its genesis and history. It provides an introduction to the history methods and theories of modern geology. In 18th-century and 19th-century Europe, geologists exploring the earth's surface collected fossils and hotly debated the origin of the layered and folded rocks that contained them. The development of seismology, the study of earthquakes, in the 20th century shifted the focus from the terrestrial crust to the earth's deep interior. Our knowledge of the chemistry of the earth and of the solar system has been revolutionized by the advances in laboratory technology. High resolution mass spectrometry has allowed scientists to explore the very hearts of atoms; geologists have applied this method of analysis to meteorites and lunar rocks. They have also scrutinized detailed photographs of distant planets gathered by unmanned probes. Scientists can now measure the isotopic composition of atoms with extreme precision. As miraculous as it may seem, a microgram of meteorite yields more information about the structure of the earth and the primitive history of the solar system than years of fieldwork on the earth's surface. Allegre was a project scientist during the interplanetary space missions and was awarded the Crafoord Prize 1986 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.