Notes - Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences - page 266

1 . S. G. Brush, “A History of Modern Selenogony: Theoretical Origins of the Moon, from
Capture to Crash 1955-1984,” Space Science Reviews 47, no. 3 (1988): 230.
2 . B. M. French, The Moon Book: Exploring the Mysteries of the Lunar World (New York:
Penguin, 1977).
3 . S. G. Brush, Fruitful Encounters: The Origin of the Solar System and of the Moon from
Chamberlain to Apollo , A History of Modern Planetary Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 183.
4 . I. I. Mitroff, The Subjective Side of Science: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Psychology of
the Apollo Moon Scientists (New York: American Elsevier, 1974).
5 . Ibid., 154.
6 . R. A. Daly, “Origin of the Moon and Its Topography,” Proceedings of the American Philo-
sophical Society 90, no. 2 (1946): 104.
7 . Ibid., 105.
8 . R. B. Baldwin and D. E. Wilhelms, “Historical Review of a Long-Overlooked Paper by R.
A. Daly Concerning the Origin and Early History of the Moon,” Journal of Geophysical Re-
search 97, no. E3 (1992).
9 . F. Birch, Reginald Aldworth Daly, May 19, 1871-September 19, 1957 (Washington, D.C.:
National Academy of Sciences, 1960).
10 . M. P. Billings, “Reginald A. Daly, Geologist,” Science 127, no. 3288 (1958).
11 . U. B. Marvin, “Reflections on the American Rejection of Continental Drift,” Metascience
10, no. 2 (2001).
12 . W. K. Hartmann and D. R. Davis, “Satellite-Sized Planetesimals and Lunar Origin,”
Icarus 24, no. 4 (1975): 511.
13 . H. S. F. Cooper, “Letter from the Space Center,” New Yorker (1971): 79.
14 . Ibid., 79.
Dinosaur Killer
This chapter and the next are drawn from J. L. Powell, Night Comes to the Cretaceous: Dino-
saur Extinction and the Transformation of Modern Geology (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1998),
and brought up to date.
1 . L. W. Alvarez et al., “Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction,”
Science 208, no. 4448 (1980).
2 . Geologists use the nickname “K-T” rather than “C-T” so as to avoid confusion with the
older Cambrian period. Cretaceous comes from the Latin creta for chalk, which is Kreide in
German. Lately geologists have come to call it the K-Pg boundary, the latter abbreviation stand-
ing for the newer term Paleogene, which comprises the first three epochs of the Tertiary period.
For reasons of history, we will stick with “K-T.” See the geologic time scale in figure 5 .
3 . G. L. Jepsen, “Riddles of the Terrible Lizards,” American Scientist (1964).
4 . L. W. Alvarez, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 8.
5 . Ibid., 252.
6 . Meteorites contain much more iridium than terrestrial rocks. The iridium in sedimentary
rocks appears to have rained from space as microscopic particles worn from tiny meteorites
passing through the atmosphere. If the meteoritic dust falls at a steady rate, then the more of it in