An Introduction to Cosmochemistry

by Charles R. Cowley

This upper-division textbook describes the composition and evolution of material objects in the universe. The survey begins with a discussion of terrestrial materials and ends with the composition of quasars and distant galaxies. There are two main themes: chemical processes responsible for the abundances we observe, and nuclear processes in which the chemical elements originate. The author presents a total pedagogic synthesis of the subject, building on the basic information in the first chapters to lead into a fuller explanation of the composition of the planets and stellar and primordial nucleosynthesis. The later chapters treat the analytical methods of stellar and nebular spectra, and move on to the composition of stars and galaxies. The book is fully referenced and includes problem sets for the student.

504 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 1995

Reviews

[Nick Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

ugh. if i wanted to read about mineralogy i wouldn't have always drank before earth science labs. this is all the boring of geology (plate scratchings, anyone? some lustre, some lines of cleavage, some fracture, some gneiss and shale and slate and suck?) but it won't even help me to determine whether my basement will collapse in ten years or, finding myself caught without supply one in a gabbro- and dolomite-colored future, its biota conquered by long-suffering and finally erumpent Xenoliths from the Mantle of the Earth, slaving for schistwrecks in their merciless Lithostratigraphic Mining Zones, what rocks might be safely metasomatized (answer: none, unless you're a lithophagic bivalve or, like, the avatar of Hutton's Uniformitarianism pursuing Werner's Neptunism's last followers to the ends of the earth or at least its Angular Unconformities*, so really what was the point of two weeks of Rock Lab?).

it looked pretty authoritative, though, and definitely had a delightfully irritated tone regarding out-of-date sources. any updated edition will call for jihad.

* yes, these were both actual 18th century scientific dogmas