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Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for.

That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites (The Meteorite Hunters) and ‘city-killer’ asteroids (How to Kill an Asteroid). Schilling’s book is little more than half the length of either of those, yet he still manages to include entertaining, information-packed introductions to both topics.

Another thing I have to confess is that, although I’ve often written about this subject myself, I still learned quite a few new things from this book. For example, it’s not really true to say (as I’m afraid I have done, in the past) that a meteor trail is caused by an inbound meteoroid ‘burning up’ in the atmosphere. Actually the meteoroid evaporates rather than burns, and the glowing trail is caused by excited gas molecules in the air, not the meteoroid itself. These may sound like minor points, but they get the science right – as popular science writing ought to – rather than mangling it into a more easily digestible but not-quite-correct form.

The media, or at any rate the tabloids, never tire of trying to scare us out of our wits with dire warnings about some new asteroid threat or another. But the truth is there’s almost never any serious cause for alarm – perhaps not so surprising, given that in the whole of human history the total number of confirmed fatalities caused by meteorite impact is exactly one (the victim being an Iraqi man in August 1888 – another fact I didn’t previously know). The real importance of asteroids (which is what they’re called when they’re observed in space) and meteorites (the debris that remains after falling to Earth) lies not in any supposed threat they pose, but in what they can teach us about the universe we live in. 

That’s why serious books on such topics are so important, if only as an antidote to tabloid hysteria. And if all you want is a short but fascinating and wide-ranging primer, then look no further than this book.

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