Scientific Debates in Space Science: Springer Praxis Books

Chapter 1 Introduction.- Chapter 2 Solar Wind or Solar Breeze?.- Chapter 3 Open versus Closed Magnetosphere.- Chapter 4 Influx of Small Comets into Earth’s Atmosphere.- Chapter 5 Origin of the Moon.- Chapter 6 Lunar Dust.- Chapter 7 Did the Chicxulub Impact Cause the Cretaceous Extinctions?.- Chapter 8 Size of the Solar System.- Chapter 9 Sources of Gamma-Ray Bursts.- Chapter 10 Reflections on Space Science Research.- Name Index.- Subject Index.

Warren David Cummings was the first PhD to graduate from the Space Science Department of Rice University. He then joined the faculty of the Department of Planetary and Space Science at UCLA. Dr. Cummings later served as Head of the Department of Physics at Grambling Statevolumes.

This book features several of the significant scientific debates and controversies that helped develop space science in the early space era. The debates led to significant new understandings of the constituents and processes occurring beyond Earth’s atmosphere, and often opened new research directions. Scientific speculations with their resultant debates have played an important role in the development and furthering of research in general. The book thus has broad intellectual importance in illustrating how science advances. The book includes debates in the subject areas of heliophysics (physics in the cosmic region that covers particles and magnetic fields flowing from the Sun), Earth’s moon, solar system asteroids and comets, and the origin of cosmic gamma-ray bursts. A final chapter describes two important and surprising early scientific discoveries that involved no debates.  
The target audience for this book includes (a) active and retired space scientists, (b) space enthusiasts, and (c) students as supplemental (or even prime) reading in an introductory astronomy and/or space science course. The topics of the debates and controversies, their resolutions, and their pointing to further research and understanding of nature are of both historical and contemporary interest, appeal, and value.

Relates some of the important scientific debates that helped to develop space science in several research topics Covers scientific debates on the heliosphere, the Moon, asteroids and comets, and cosmic gamma rays With a Foreword by the former NASA Associate Administrator Thomas H. Zurbuchen, PhD