9780062895080
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When the Earth Had Two Moons audiobook

  • By: Erik Asphaug
  • Narrator: Adam Verner
  • Category: Cosmology, Science
  • Length: 9 hours 9 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: October 29, 2019
  • Language: English
  • (211 ratings)
(211 ratings)
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When the Earth Had Two Moons Audiobook Summary

An astonishing exploration of planet formation and the origins of life by one of the world’s most innovative planetary geologists.

In 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the moon. Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: the far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava-plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail.

How could this be, and what might it tell us about our own place in the universe? As it turns out, quite a lot.

Fourteen billion years ago, the universe exploded into being, creating galaxies and stars. Planets formed out of the leftover dust and gas that coalesced into larger and larger bodies orbiting around each star. In a sort of heavenly survival of the fittest, planetary bodies smashed into each other until solar systems emerged. Curiously, instead of being relatively similar in terms of composition, the planets in our solar system, and the comets, asteroids, satellites and rings, are bewitchingly distinct. So, too, the halves of our moon.

In When the Earth Had Two Moons, esteemed planetary geologist Erik Asphaug takes us on an exhilarating tour through the farthest reaches of time and our galaxy to find out why. Beautifully written and provocatively argued, When the Earth Had Two Moons is not only a mind-blowing astronomical tour but a profound inquiry into the nature of life here–and billions of miles from home.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

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When the Earth Had Two Moons Audiobook Narrator

Adam Verner is the narrator of When the Earth Had Two Moons audiobook that was written by Erik Asphaug

Erik Asphaug is a professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. He studies planet formation and evolution and has been on the science teams of numerous past and upcoming NASA and international space missions. He lives with his family in Arizona.

About the Author(s) of When the Earth Had Two Moons

Erik Asphaug is the author of When the Earth Had Two Moons

More From the Same

When the Earth Had Two Moons Full Details

Narrator Adam Verner
Length 9 hours 9 minutes
Author Erik Asphaug
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date October 29, 2019
ISBN 9780062895080

Subjects

The publisher of the When the Earth Had Two Moons is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Cosmology, Science

Additional info

The publisher of the When the Earth Had Two Moons is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062895080.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Sumit

November 26, 2019

An amazing exploration of planet formation and the origins of lifeIn When the Earth Had Two Moons, planetary geologist Erik Asphaug takes us on an exciting tour of our galaxy detailing strangest miracles in space and an examination into the nature of life. Asphaug explores a variety of planetary forms—including comets, asteroids, moons, and the sun—as he explores the complex and deeply galaxy and beyond. Combining his own research with scientific discoveries, He discusses the origin of life, our own understanding of the universe, on the history and current knowledge of the planets, familiar and unfamiliar moons, and unattached bodies in between. He has added several other interesting titbits like Pluto’s status as a planet or how exploring Jupiter will feel like. As a geologist, he also devotes entire chapters to extraterrestrial topography, plate tectonics, and our pursuit of liquid water throughout the galaxy. As an academic and as a Professor of Planetary Science at various universities, Asphaug brings his rich experience and amazing insights into writing this book. Asphaug opts for concise explanations over the relatively abstract astrophysics. Having said that, the overly technical language is likely to irritate general readers. Let’s face it, astrology and advanced physics are not easy topics to grasp for lay readers. Hence many readers could find sections of the book a bit too complex to understand.Overall the book is an exciting tour of the galaxy exploring many topics at once. Though a bit technical at times, it’s still an interesting and entertaining guide to our unknown galaxy. Three and a half stars Many thanks to the publishers HarperCollins, the author Erik Asphaug and Edelweiss for the ARC.

Carlos

January 30, 2020

This is a very informative book although a bit dry. There is a lot of science but also a lot of conjecture which is precisely what the author intended when writing this book, he says that the more we explore the unknown space the more conjectures we will have to take until we can fix everything in one theorem. The more questions we ask and the more we realize how little we know about how our own moon was built and how our sun burns and wether this same circumstances could be replicated in another solar system the more we will resume exploring space.

Grumpus

December 23, 2019

The grumpus23 (23-word commentary)If you have an interest, this is a good presentation of the randomness of the cosmos and how it all came to be.

Noah

August 25, 2022

This is an interesting book about the formation of our solar system. It discusses how a billionaire might fund a mission to land a boat-rover mission to Titan and what that mission might look like, it explores the possibility of extraterrestrial life in the universe (as all books of this kind do) and argues for the author's theory that the event that created the moon actually created two moons, but that one eventually crashed into the other, and this event explains the Moon's strange geography and geology.

Tim

July 11, 2020

Nicely written, well-paced, and well-researched popular science book on astronomy written by one of the leading researchers in the field, an expert on the geology of various solar system bodies and who worked on several unmanned missions, including the Galileo mission to Jupiter, LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite), and the on-going OSIRIS-REx (an asteroid study and sample return mission on its way to the near earth asteroid Bennu). The book can be read almost as two books, the first half (and portions of the second half or thereabouts) a good general introduction to topics in solar system astronomy (ours and also other star systems, as especially towards the end there is some really nice passages on extrasolar planets), with very approachable and accessible text (well supported by numerous black and white illustrations, a glossary, an index, and an extensive and very readable section of notes at the end of the book, well worth reading). Though I found some of this section for me personally going over some familiar ground there were many new things too and it has the virtue of being written with some of the most recent information by someone currently active in the field (the book was published in 2019). The second half of or aspect of the book is the author’s theoretical and modeling work in studying a number of origin questions still unanswered (or for which there are competing answers), such as the story of the formation and composition of the Moon, the formation of asteroids, why the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn are so different in terms of numbers and composition, and how the various moons, planets and asteroids in our solar system got their current orbits. Some of these sections can get a little technical but the author patiently explained topics and supported what he talked about with numerous photos and diagrams, many from computer modeling he did. A lot of time when I write nonfiction reviews I do outlines of what the various chapters talked about (if there aren’t too many; books with say 10 chapters or less, though I find books with more than 10 chapters are often organized into sections and one can talk about sections). For reviewing this book, despite only having ten chapters (seven numbered chapters, plus an introduction, conclusion, and epilogue), I found that a bit of a challenge. As at least one other reviewer has noted, Erik Asphaug, while always engaging (my first time reading the book I read over a hundred pages in one sitting) could bounce around a lot in particular chapters. The different topics flowed, they were interesting, I understood them, but it could be difficult, at least for the chapters at the beginning of the book, to always get a strong sense of theme (towards the end of the book with the chapters on his own research the various chapters were much more thematic). Having said that, here goes. The introduction is well named, introducing the reader to many general concepts, many more of historical interest, such as the lunar calendar (noting how it can be a challenge, as it “is a living thing: when you try to write it down, it resists,” as “after the twelfth full moon there are eleven days left over, more or less”), the role of computers versus direct visual observation in telescopic astronomy, his noting that this “is a book about the origin of planetary diversity,” a nice introduction to Martian meteorites, and some general thoughts on science. Chapter 1 introduced the reader to a lot of concepts, all well explained I thought, including the works of Johannes Kepler, astrometry, parallax, ellipses (in terms of orbits, instead of circles), gravity (including Isaac Newton’s work on gravity), the lunar origin theories of George Darwin (son of Charles Darwin), Bode’s Law, what a standard candle is (and what a Cepheid variable star is), general theories on planetary formation, how planets form and are detected around other stars (we know of four thousand exoplanets now!), the importance of the metallicity of a star (metal being any element other than hydrogen or helium), the importance of carbon and oxygen (the second and third most abundant elements in the universe after hydrogen), an introduction to T-Tauri stars (and why they are important for the purposes of this book), and some interesting passages on the possible future of Betelgeuse. Whew! Chapter 2 was no less interesting and though maybe a little less wide-ranging, covering the works of several ancient Greeks (most notably Eratosthenes), the composition of the Moon, the history of our study and understanding of the composition of the Moon, the lunar observations of Galileo and Robert Hooke (the latter “who first gave us lunar geology”), the science and history of the science of impact craters (as echoed in another book I recently read, _Fire in the Sky_ by Gordon L. Dillow, which I recommend, Asphaug wrote that it “took centuries for the idea of planetary impact cratering to catch on”), some interesting passages on impact craters on the Moon, Venus, and elsewhere and what they say about a number of topics (among other things, if “you know the impact rate and the scaling law that gives you the size of a crater that forms in a given impact, then the craters seen on a planetary body serve as a clock, provided you have a calibration of the impact rate,” something the Moon serves nicely for), and some interesting passages on plate tectonics. Chapter 3 covered theories of planetary formation (with surprisingly hierarchical theories; “beginning with planetesimals, which accrete into embryos, which grow into a system of Moon- to Mars- sized bodies known as oligarchs), what and how to do crater scaling (using crater formation in a laboratory setting to understand crater formation on astronomical bodies), the different types of giant impacts (which can include hit-and-run collisions), the importance of water in planetary formation, composition, and how impacts play out, the role tidal heating plays in the states of water on an astronomical body (and how tidal heating can occur, introducing such concepts as forced eccentricity caused by mutual gravitational interactions among the various satellites such as say around Jupiter), panspermia (the spreading of life from world to world thanks to hitch hiking on rocks thrown off a planet or a satellite by giant impacts), just in a sentence or two (in support of panspermia), how fossilized diatoms were found high in the Transantarctic Mountains, possibly from debris ejected by the Eltanin impact 2.1 million years ago, a kilometer wide asteroid that hit the Southern Ocean and made a 20-kilometer hole. Chapter 4 introduced the reader to a number of topics, such as Keplerian shear (the “tendency for adjacent planetesimals to orbit at different speeds”) and what this means for planetary formation, a number of accretion theories (and how they might be different for small bodies and large bodies), lunar crust composition and what an understanding of this means for theories for the formation of the Moon (introducing the concept called KREEP, a layer between the lunar mantle and crust that has elevated amounts of potassium (K), rare earth elements (REE), phosphorous (P), uranium, and thorium), discussion on the objects of the Kuiper Belt (particularly Ultima Thule and Haumea with its two known satellites Hi’iaka and Namaka), quite a bit on Pluto and especially its orbit (using some of the very latest information on Pluto), discussion that Jupiter and Saturn were once in different places in the solar system (and introducing the Nice model, named after the French observatory “where the idea came together”), what giant plant migration meant for the history of the formation of other solar system bodies, what Jupiter can teach us about how satellites form around other gas giant planets in the galaxy, the differences in the satellites in Jupiter and Saturn (Saturn has middle-sized moons, MSMs, while Jupiter does not, and why this might be), the “rabbit hole of weirdness” that is the reality of a number of Saturn’s satellites (such as Iapetus, Mimas, Titan, and Hyperion), and quite a bit on the fascinating moon Titan, with is thick atmosphere, rain, and surface lakes and rivers as well as what a hypothetical mission to explore it might be like. Chapter 5 talked again about some of the exoplanets known to us as far as types (“super Earths” and “mini Neptunes,” both of which are between 3 to 10 Earth masses and both of which appear to represent most of the planets found so far, though there are other types like “hot Jupiters”), the selection bias that leads most worlds discovered so far to be of these types, some really interesting sections on various meteorites and meteor showers (such as the famed Leonid meteor shower of 1833 and the Orgueil meteorite of 1864, falling in the Pyrenees, the first meteorite to receive widespread scientific attention), the possible role of amino acids from carbonaceous chondrite meteorites in the origin of life, the strange interstellar interloper 1I/’Oumuamua, quite a bit on comets, and more coverage on the physics and geology of planetary impacts (as in two planets hitting each other and possibly merging). Chapter 6 had a great deal on the formation of the moon and how a planetary impact explains its current composition and structure (most of it owed to the impact and merger of astronomical body called Theia which hit the Earth), how difficult it is to find chemical signatures of Theia, the origins of the two Martian moons, differences and similarities in the formation of Venus, Earth, and Mars, how Mars may have been once “warm, wet” and what it was like, quite a bit on the history of asteroid and comet impacts on Earth (especially discussing the asteroid impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago as well as the history of this theory), quite a bit on comet formation and structure (and the really complex physics of accretion and impacts, “quite challenging computationally”), and the importance of the discoveries of the first probe to image the lunar farside (Luna 3 in 1959, with some discussion of the Cold War espionage connections of the mission which used “borrowed” American film for a Soviet mission). Chapter 7 talked a lot about asteroid formation (with concepts like collisional grinding), what the dwarf planets are, the Anna Karenina principle of planetary formation (“All accreted planets are alike; every unaccreted planet is unique in how it was not accreted”), an introduction to the amazing TRAPPIST-1 system of 7 planets, five of which appear to be “within the estimated habitable zone of their star,” an “ultra-cool M-dwarf,” more on how extrasolar planets are detected and observed (and whether the Earth and its companion planets could be detected by aliens), and ruminations on how likely life is in in the universe. This book covered a lot and especially early on the book could bounce around a good bit. That was fine with me, as where the author bounced to was always interesting. I learned a lot and if anything the book makes me want to read still more on astronomy. Though I wish some of the illustrations were in color (the author even talks about how some were in color and suggests finding them in color), many were excellent and quite a few I had never seen before. I really liked how the very latest findings and theories were included as well, making the book quite up to date.

Peter

April 18, 2020

When I was in school, the planetary system was the gold standard for modeling permanence and regularity. We even had a law for predicting where planets could be found. Of course, whether it was a "law" or a coincidence would depend on observations from other planetary systems around other stars, but in 1977, that was not something to worry about.Well, the returns are now in, and the universe is far stranger than we can imagine, with large planets migrating around the solar system or spiraling into orbits that take a week to travel around their stars. Planets smashing into each other as dust particles build up into boulders build up into embryos that reach a size called "oligarchs" from which the survivors of the age of bombardment can be called "planets" or "moons" (or "plutinos.") Erik Asphaug's "When the Earth had Two Moons" offers the apogee of "Gosh! Wow! Science" with a tour of the Solar System's pre-history. Long before we had our nine planets, there may have been many more planets orbiting the Sun. Some of those planets - lost Jupiters and Saturns spiraled into the Sun. Others collided and left behind one planet as the "lucky shark" surviving in the ocean. The Earth/Moon system is the result of a collision between proto-Earth and a Mars-sized "oligarch," now called Theia, which struck at just the right angle to deposit a large section of Earth's crust into Earth orbit. This formed the Moon, which has been slowly receding from Earth, so that right now it is at the exact distance to permit full eclipses of the Sun. When we get reports of Super-Earths, that may simply be an indication that the "Earths" of that system didn't avoid the continuing accretion that could have happened in our systemAsphaug is noted for a pioneering theory of the formation of the Moon. One of the discoveries of the Apollo program was of the Dark Side of the Moon, which had never been observed before. The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth and only ever shows one side to the planet. The Dark Side does not have the familiar "Mares" or dark flat spot we are used to seeing. Instead, it is all mountains and has a thicker crust. Asphaug theorizes that there was a time when the Earth was orbited by two moons. The smaller eventually crashed into what is now the Dark Side, which formed the mountainous terrain we now know to exist.This is mind-bending stuff. Asphaug's text is accessible to the layman, but I really couldn't figure out how his topics were organized. It seemed that he meandered from one topic to another without any organizing idea.Nonetheless, this is interesting material and it would be worth buying Asphaug a beer and letting him meander into the night.

Timothy

March 13, 2020

I have always enjoyed science but have no background in it and rarely read it. As a result, large portions of Asphaug’s work went right over my head. I stuck with it, however, and really enjoyed what I was able to understand. The purpose of the book is to explore some of the latest theories concerning the contents and formation of the solar system. The simple version seems to be that, over time, matter comes together until it becomes too big, then it explodes apart and does it all over again. In the process you get stars, planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and dust of all different shapes and sizes. It’s fascinating to think of how it all happens and especially how long it all takes - billions of years in many cases. The scale is just mind boggling. The frustrating part is that it’s almost all just theory at this point with extremely limited evidence to support it. As the title suggests, the climactic story is an exploration of the author’s theory about the earth having two moons hundreds of millions of years ago. Eventually they slammed together and created the one we have today. It’s a theory based largely on speculative computer models whose parameters could be way off the mark. Despite all the possibility for error, however, my perception of the solar system has changed for the better and my love of the grandeur of space has only increased. From the sounds of it, there are quite a few upcoming missions set to take off in the 2020s that will explore the comets, asteroids, and moons of the solar system. This will provide massive quantities of data to help clarify the picture for us. So long as civilization survives, science will continue bringing us closer to truth and understanding. I thank Mr. Asphaug for his tireless work in illuminating the current state of that quest.

Jess

October 21, 2020

So amazing for an intro/101 The Planets geodiversity history etc. - so much that i know nothing about! Definitely was very interested in this from an astrology perspective - where have the planets been, where are they moving to, etc., and I found a lot of helpful stuff. There is a stream-of-conscious style to this book that may be annoying for folks but i really love things written this way - some beautiful writing, and I feel like I learned so much.

Ameya

September 29, 2020

Very readable and packed full of all kinds of astronomical info!

Anna

September 18, 2022

3.5

Josie Deryn

September 03, 2021

4.5!

Bill

January 07, 2020

Aspaug takes the reader on a tour of the solar system, looking at the planets and their moons. he covers much interesting information in this book, but tends to jump from idea to idea making the book kind of a collection of factoids with only a few topics getting more than a few paragraphs of attention. One often feels that a little more detail would have made a more complete story."Ruined Structures" talks of planetary formation, concentrating on the elemental composition of the planets and their moons."Rocks in a Stream" works its way around to craters on the surface of the moon, Venus and asteroids and their formation, a look at plate tectonics and the Chicxulub crater on Earth."Strange Places and Small Things" discusses the formation of planetary satellites through accretion. Interesting information on the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn."Systems Inside Systems" looks at planetary formation through the accretion of gas, dust and ice in a protoplanetary disk to form large oligarchs which often collide - physical contact taking on the order of an hour, due to their size - and perhaps merge. The importance of water in supporting life makes Earth the "Goldilock's" planet."Pebbles and Giant Impacts" looks at asteroids, which form a belt beyond Mars that is unexpected from certain models of planet formation. Aspaung then looks at early understandings of asteroids and asteroid impacts, and is then on to comets, their composition. Next is impacts when oligarchs collide, sometimes resulting in their forming a single object. "The Last Ones Standing" talks of Theia, but without introducing the object which is now in the Earth, in the Moon or in the sky depending on the model. He moves on to planetary accretion, the composition of the Earth, Venus and Mars, Near Earth Objects and their impacting Earth, and Moon craters. The far side of the Moon is much different from the side facing Earth - perhaps this is a result of a major impact. On to eclipses, then to Trojan points (Lagrange points) in planetary orbits that can accumulate material. The author participated in the development of a hypothesis that at one time the Earth had a second moon (a Trojan) that impacted the Moon, resulting in it having different composition on two sides."A Billion Earths" examines exoplanets, such as those found around the red dwarf TRAPPIST-1 40 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, with a bit on the probability of finding life.While Aspaug mentions various mechanisms involved in the formation of objects within the solar system, it is hard to sort them out from his narrative. I would have preferred an approach that looked at the processes and then examined the results. It appears that much of this is still unknown territory, however, and Aspaug quotes astrogeophysicist Harold Jeffreys as viewing the diverse theories in 1929 as "... a lumber-room full of untested hypotheses [in need of] an occasional spring-cleaning and bonfire."

Angus

April 20, 2021

I first came across the idea of two moons in 'the earth as the cradle of life' in about 2013. It provided an alternative to the seemingly unlikely conventional view which resulted in the remarkable earth moon system we know, love and need. Yet there was nothing that seemed to be available online to support the idea that the two moon hypothesis was a viable alternative, only the usual collision theory. Knowing the two moon idea was credibly sourced, I was elated to discover by chance this book on the shelf of my local technical bookshop (Boffins, Perth). How the solar system has changed since the first visions of the moons and planets exposed in the first probes sent out in the 60s and 70s. No longer the fanciful, imaginative worlds with a chance of life or livability, but ruthlessly hot or cold ones, albeit diverse in their harshness, like Tolstoyan unhappy families. Apparently this pessimistic picture is overstated, with the icy Galilean Giants harbouring, well, harbours, deeply hidden below their ice crusts, probably forever. But it is the orbital patterns of moons and planets which begins the more substantial results. Moons and perhaps planets in orbital resonance begin to tell a story of an order which emerged from earlier chaos. At the same time displaying a pattern which none of the many planets beyond our neighborhood are yet to exhibit. Somehow the Giants scooped up most of the smaller inner debris, moving outward in the process, leaving a few survivors including the earth. And theia, the Mars sized, moon producing collider, whose erratic orbit was destined to fail. And it seems somehow it wasn't just the one for some time, it orbit also destined to fail. A lot of this book concerns planetary orbitals and large scale ballistics, the results of high end computational simulations which attempt to wind back the solar system clock to discover the original setup. Which it turns out is far more complex than Newton or Kepler might have imagined. The flow of the books story is also so what more chaotic than one might expect, perhaps following some of the author's research path and leaving the big two moon reveal to the end. I didn't realize how much research is still taking place in this area and makes for an intriguing update to useful introductory books such as 'the planets'. A scientist colleague said recently that she likes the idea that we retain mystery in our quest for knowledge, that our investigations don't negate the sense of wonder that comes from not knowing everything. This book has convinced me that we are a long way from needing to worry about that for some time yet. We haven't figured out our own neighborhood yet, and there bunches more in the surrounding light years that promise to provide further intrigue if we ever figure that out out.

Kalle

October 12, 2021

I read /When the Earth Had Two Moons: Cannibal Planets, Dreadful Orbits, Icy Giants, Dirty Comets and the Origins of Today's Night Sky/, by Erik Asphaug:https://scientificinquirer.com/2019/1...The book covers how the planets in our solar system formed, the planets and their moons and their chemical components, and their orbits and distance from the Sun in AUs (Astronomical Units).1 AU is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km), the distance from the Earth to the Sun. It's approximately 8 light-minutes. More exactly, one astronomical unit (AU) = 92,955,807 miles (149,597,871 km).Asphaug explains comets and galaxies and the expansion of the universe, and the history of discoveries of heavenly objects and the relevant formulas, including the physics involved.Oh yes, and Asphaug explains that Earth used to have two moons, not one. Near the end of the book he shames the rich for not privately funding more projects in space exploration, and suggests what he would do if he had the money (and what the 100 richest people on the planet should do and fund, in his opinion, in the name of science and discovery).Super interesting book.

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