Life on Surtsey, Iceland’s
Upstart Island. By Loree Griffin Burns. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $18.99.
Impact! Asteroids and the Science
of Saving the World. By Elizabeth Rauch. Photos by Karin Anderson. Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt. $18.99.
One of the most amazing
things about the excellent “Scientists in the Field” series is the way it shows
some scientists focusing on tiny things and others on the very big picture –
and in all cases doing so with meticulous attention to detail and absolute
commitment to their projects, small or large. Life on Surtsey looks at the very small but very important things
happening on a volcanic island that was formed in 1963 by an eruption 15 miles
off the coast of Iceland. For 50-plus years, scientists have studied the very
small elements that turn barren rock into a place teeming with life, both plant
and animal. Loree Griffin Burns focuses on Erling Ólafsson, who has spent nearly half a century studying some very
small things on Surtsey: insects. They are among the first colonizers of the
island, but not the very first. As Life
on Surtsey explains, it was only two weeks after Surtsey formed that
something alive was there: a seagull, one of the many that live and breed on
other rocky outcrops in the area. And birds do not simply visit on their own:
they bring nesting materials that may contain plants or seeds, their feathers
harbor mites and other insects, and as the seagulls catch and eat fish and
other foods, leftovers from the meals rot and provide potential nutrients for
various plants. Nor did the colonizing of Surtsey happen only because of birds:
the sea itself washed plant matter onto the island, and some of it took root.
Bit by bit, life took hold. The photos showing Surtsey at different stages are
fascinating: the close-up views of plants, eggs, insects and birds show how
quickly life attaches to and thrives on the new land, and the discussion of the
care the scientists take to avoid impinging on the island’s natural development
is especially intriguing and indicative of just what it means to be a scientist
in the field. For example, there is the matter of bathrooms. To avoid having
human waste become a factor in Surtsey’s development, urinals for men and women
consist of small holes in the sand in specific places. Any toilet paper used
must be disposed of in the trash can inside the simple hut where the scientists
stay – none may be left outdoors. As for “anything more than pee,” Burns
explains that the scientists must walk to a specific, rocky part of the island,
lift a rock, make use of the hole beneath it, and replace the rock – choosing a
location “close enough to the ocean that the waves can come up and carry away your
deposit at high tide, but not so close that the waves come while you’re
squatting there and carry you away.”
Juxtaposing these conditions with the remarkable photos and carefully explained
experiments of the scientists makes Life
on Surtsey a truly amazing experience, one that will give young readers a
firm understanding of the fascination, if not exactly glamor, of the lives of
the scientists who study this still-developing island.
Life on Surtsey is all about the very small, but the scientific focus
is on enormous matters in Impact! The
book opens with a scene that could come from a fictional end-of-the-world
thriller: explosions, shattered glass spraying everywhere, buildings shaking,
earthquake-like jolts, the immediate fear that a nuclear bomb has detonated
nearby. It turns out that all the effects were the result of an asteroid strike
by a comparatively small space rock, one the size of a six-story building that
had exploded in the sky and rained pieces of itself to the ground over many
miles. Yes, a six-story asteroid, including the one that came down near
Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, and was heavier than the Eiffel Tower, is rather
small – there are much, much bigger ones out there. The question of what to do
if one of those appears on a collision course with Earth lies at the heart of Impact! Science fiction aside, we do not
yet have a way to prevent a potential planetwide catastrophe. The scientists
profiled in Elizabeth Rauch’s book are working toward that goal. The research
may be complicated, but the way the scientists go about it comes across in
Rauch’s writing as easy to understand, as in a search for meteorites near
Creston, California: “It’s a game of ‘One of These Things Is Not Like the
Other.’ What looks different from all the other rocks around? What doesn’t fit
in? What might have come from outer space?” An excellent page of Karin
Anderson’s photos shows “Meteor-Wrongs” on top and meteorites on the bottom,
visually explaining to readers what scientists must sort through when trying to
find space rocks and use them to study the potential effects of future
collisions with Earth. Anderson’s photos are an excellent complement to Rauch’s
clear text: the pictures show everything from a large meteor crater to a thinly
sliced section of a meteorite about to be examined under a microscope. Inevitably,
the book discusses the origin of the solar system and the extinction of the
dinosaurs – caused, in large part, by an asteroid six miles wide colliding with
Earth and forming what is today called the Chicxulub crater, half in Mexico and
half under the Gulf of Mexico. Some of this material may be familiar to
readers, but other information will not be, such as the fact that 183 asteroid
impact craters have been discovered on Earth – the map showing all their
locations is fascinating. How often do major asteroid strikes occur? About once
every 300 years, Rauch writes in the caption beneath a photo showing some of
the destruction that one impact caused in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, when 80
million trees were destroyed. And what about risks in the future? The book’s
second half focuses on the search for PHAs (potentially hazardous asteroids)
and the importance of getting some warning, even a small amount, before any of
them hits – hopefully enough time to evacuate the impact area and protect what
structures can be protected. The scientists’ enthusiasm as they search for PHAs
is tempered by the reality that they may one day discover something that could
be a major threat to our planet. Possible ways of dealing with an imminent
threat – none of them currently practical – make up the last part of Impact! An asteroid-breaking bomb, a
crash-landing by a spacecraft, solar sails to collect energy that would
redirect the asteroid, and other ideas (including one based on paintball) are
discussed and shown in intriguing diagrams. None of them is practical yet; most
will never be developed; but some are well along in research stages and will
hopefully be ready for deployment before a scientist, perhaps one of those
profiled in this book, discovers an Earth-bound asteroid whose path is likely
to intersect our planet’s, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
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