The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars

Description

Weaving natural history, memoir, and the stories of maverick scientists, daring adventurers, and stargazing dreamers, this epic work takes us from Antarctica to outer space to tell the tale of how the study of meteorites became a scientific passion. A famed polar explorer who risked personal ruin-and the lives of his crew-in a quest for massive iron meteorites hidden in an Arctic wasteland. A nervy, obscure professor who staked his life against the scientific indifference of his day to become the world's most prominent meteorite collector and researcher. An Australian scientist confronted with a geological mystery in the Outback-the key to which might yet unlock a secret of evolution on planet Earth. These characters and many other collectors, researchers, dreamers, schemers, and ordinary people populate Christopher Cokinos's The Fallen Sky. Through their foibles and successes, their adventures and tragedies, Cokinos unfolds the panoramic history of how science came to understand meteorites-the rocks that fall from space to the Earth-and how these stones reveal truths not only of the solar system, but of the human heart as well. Long sought as trophies of exploratory success, scientific specimens, or even space-age novelties, meteorites have a long and complex hold on the human psyche. Their allure endures from tribal altars to high-tech labs, and Cokinos incisively explores the drama and history of our pursuit of the fallen sky. Over the course of more than seven years, he crisscrossed the globe from Greenland to the American Southwest, from Australia to Antarctica, following in the footsteps of explorers, collectors, and scientists, gaining access to their personal papers and documents, to try to understand the obsession that draws so many people to these fragments of iron and stone, these pieces of the universe that we can hold in our hands. This is an adventure story, a compelling work of first-person literary journalism, and a scientific history, all told through the lives of its remarkable characters-the eccentrics and geniuses who have committed themselves to understanding the stuff of life and death that comes from the sky.