Customer Reviews

Volcanic Worlds: Exploring The Solar System's Volcanoes (Springer Praxis Books / Geophysical Sciences)

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Can ladies do science?

Of course.

As Sally Ride says in the Foreword, this is the first edited book on planetary geology written solely by women. Let's hear it for Rosaly Lopes, Tracy Gregg, Katherine Cashman, Ellen Stofan, Lisa Gaddis, Susan Sakimoto, Joy Crisp, Louise Prockter, Mary Chapman, Gudrun Larsen, and Susan Kieffer! These ladies were the logical authorities to be chosen to write their respective chapters. And they did a great job.

Cashman leads off with a discussion of hot spot volcanism and subduction zone volcanism. The part on hot spots deals mostly with volcanoes in Hawaii, but the Laki volcano in Iceland is chosen as the most dramatic example of "the deleterious effects of volcanic gases." The section on subduction zone volcanism includes topics such as silicic lava flows and lava domes as well as caldera collapse. And there's plenty about the hazards associated with such volcanism, including a speculation that the eruption of Toba, Sumatra (74,000 years ago) may have reduced the human population to less than 100,000 back then.

Gregg talks about the exploration of volcanoes hidden at the sea floor on mid-ocean ridges. This includes some discussion of hydrothermal venting there, which can raise the ocean water temperature near a vent to over 400 degrees Celsius. And, of course, it is mentioned that there is speculation about similar volcanism (and even life) on the Jovian moon Europa.

What about "Earth's evil twin," as Stofan appropriately calls Venus? Thousands of volcanoes have been identified on Venus. We learn about lava flows there as well as long sinuous channels. Some of the lava flows there are much longer than were predicted. Hopefully, we'll learn from them how to better predict how far lava flows will travel on our own planet!

Gaddis tells us about lunar volcanoes. She shows a picture of a sinuous rille on the Moon. A few decades ago, some people speculated that such rilles were produced by water, but Gaddis explains that they are now known to have been carved by lava. And she says that volcanoes on the Moon range from about 4.3 billion years old (since the formation of the lunar crust) to 3 billion years old. There hasn't been any volcanic activity on the moon in the past billion years or so.

Sakamoto and Crisp then have sections on Martian volcanoes. Besides an overview, we get a detailed discussion of what Mars Pathfinder discovered from the Martian surface.

Lopes (who is almost literally the girl from Ipanema) has a fascinating section on the Io volcanoes observed by the Voyager and Galileo missions. She is now working on the Cassini Mission, where she is getting a chance to investigate calderas and cryovolcanism on Titan. I think we'll need a new edition to tell us about this!

Procter's section is on ice volcanism. She shows us evidence of cryoclastic eruptions on Europa and on other moons of major planets. The most interesting part is the discussion of the "cantaloupe terrain" of Triton.

Well, what do volcanoes produce? Um, ash! And Chapman and Larsen tell us plenty about it. Larsen is an expert in tephrachronology, and she knows all about the varied ages and types of ash deposits in Iceland. This detailed knowledge is used by the authors to draw conclusions about volcanic deposits on Mars (Chapman's specialty).

The book concludes with a chapter by Kieffer. She begins with the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park. She contrasts these geyser eruptions with volcanic plumes on Mars, Io, and Mount Saint Helens. And from here, she makes analogies with volcanism on Triton and Titan.

Volcanoes are very interesting. But one can see that it takes hard work and talent to do work in this field. In my opinion, there is one other requirement, namely courage. Volcanoes are dangerous! In any case, let me express my sincere admiration for all the authors in producing this fine book.

This is a great book for everyone interested in volcanoes. It is very readable and talks not only about the science but also how the researchers do the science - with some very charming stories. It is really amazing that all chapters are written by female experts. We hear a lot about the lack of women scientists but there seems to be no lack of women studying volcanoes! A great book to give as a gift to a high school or college age daughter or niece.

Despite being presented for the community of professional astronomers, this book is fascinating and essential for anyone interested in geologic phenomena around our solar system. Thanks to recent discoveries by the various spacecrafts that have been sent to the furthest reaches of the solar system, plus steadily improving earthbound observations, we can see that volcanoes are very common on other worlds and also offer a great amount of variety in their structures and behaviors. This book is composed of chapters written by various planetary geologists, starting out with volcanoes right here on Earth, in order to establish basic knowledge on volcanic processes. We then learn about the volcanoes of Venus and Mars, plus several of the solid moons of the giant outer planets. Most interesting are two of Jupiter's moons, the hot-headed sulfur-spitting Io, and the watery and possibly life-supporting Europa. For the interested layperson, note that there are some readability issues with this book. It was written by scientists for scientists, so the prose is not exactly compelling, and a glossary (or at least better explanations of the many obscure scientific terms and jargon) sure would be helpful. Meanwhile, there is a vague feminist slant to this book because all of the chapters were submitted by women scientists, but fortunately this only applies to some of the introductions, and in any case this concept can be dismissed as inconsequential. That's because anyone is capable of teaching us about these fascinating aspects of nearby worlds. [~doomsdayer520~]