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MURAD, E. & WILLIAMS, I. P. (eds) 2002. Meteors in the Earth’s Atmosphere. Meteoroids and Cosmic Dust and their Interactions with the Earth’s Upper Atmosphere.

x + 322 pp. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Price £60.00, US $80.00 (hard covers). ISBN 0 521 80431 0.

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Chicken Little was right, the sky is falling, and as this volume informs us at the rate of 40 x 10⁶ kg per year globally. Most of this incoming material is interstellar dust (50–700 µm diameter), about 4% of which reaches the surface unaltered. Other dust particles and meteoroids melt or are ablated on atmospheric entry, scattering metal ions 85–120 km above the surface of the Earth. Both the ions and particles are rich in carbon and iron, adding to planetary inventories of these biologically significant elements. This edited volume presents technical summaries of what and how we know about these phenomena, which have far-reaching implications for space travel, Solar System evolution, origin of life, oceanic sedimentation, soil science, and marine and terrestrial ecosystem nutrition.

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