The Geology of Mars provides an excellent introduction to the field of comparative
planetology and should be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of planetary scientists.
Comparative
Planetology Distance Learning Course Outline
Thinking from the standpoint of comparative
planetology, if we can now study plate tectonics in this very different place, it might be able to help us understand how plate tectonics got started on the Earth.
It is certainly a surprise to detect a gamma-ray binary in another galaxy before we find more of them in our own," said Guillaume Dubus, a team member at the Institute of
Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble in France.
This new discovery opens a new chapter in comparative
planetology in the outer solar system," said team leader Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.
So, compared to Earth science, with its firehouse of information,
planetology is thirsty for any trickle of data.
Co-author Hope Ishii, new Associate Researcher in the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and
Planetology (HIGP) at UHM SOEST, said that it is a thrilling possibility that this influx of dust has acted as a continuous rainfall of little reaction vessels containing both the water and organics needed for the eventual origin of life on Earth and possibly Mars.
Among more specific topics are the origin of modern astronomy, the formation and structure of stars, the Milky Way galaxy, the earth and moon as bases for comparative
planetology, and life on other worlds.
Topics include planet formation, requirements for life, and comparative
planetology.
Starting in Chapter 1 with a thorough overview of Plate Tectonics, and some discussion on Comparative
Planetology, the book discusses nine major topics in succession: Stress and Strain in Solids, Elasticity and Flexure, Heat Transfer, Gravity, Fluid Mechanics, Rock Rheology, Faulting, How in Porous Media, and Chemical Geodynamics.
Russian geochemist and one of the founders of
planetology.
In this project, comparative
planetology is a very powerful tool, a fact already shown by the role that Venusian atmospheric studies played in our discovery of the potential threat of global warming by greenhouse gases.
