From Stone to Star chronicles one of the great scientific adventures of our time. Written by the eminent geochemist Claude Allègre, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the sophisticated isotopic detective work that has established a geologic chronology of the earth and transformed our understanding of its genesis and history. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe geologists exploring the earth's surface collected fossils and hotly debated the origin of the layered and folded rocks in which they were embedded.
The development of seismology, the study of earthquakes, in this century shifted the focus from the terrestrial crust to the earth's deep interior. But our knowledge of the chemistry of the earth and of the solar system has been revolutionized by advances in modern laboratory technology and analysis of meteorites and lunar rocks. High resolution mass spectrometry has allowed scientists to explore the very hearts of atoms. The Apollo mission brought back our first samples of the lunar surface, and unmanned space probes have gathered detailed photographs of distant planets.
From Stone to Star provides an engaging account of this exciting new chapter in scientific discovery. Scientists can now measure the isotopic composition of atoms with extreme precision. As miraculous as it may seem, a minute quantity of meteorite yields more information about the structure of the earth and the primitive history of the solar system than years of fieldwork on the earth's surface. Allègre, who was a project scientist during the interplanetary space missions, scrupulously avoids technical jargon. His lucid prose and abiding passion for his subject succeed in creating a superbly readable introduction to the history, methods, and theories of modern geology.
Mining had an enormous role, only partly measurable, in the history of Utah. Its multidimensional impact continues today. Economically, it made a major long-term contribution to the wealth, employment, and tax base of the state and stimulated a seemingly endless range of secondary businesses and enterprises. It helped shape the state's social history, determining the location, distribution, and composition of many communities and bringing transportation systems and a wide variety of institutions to them. It developed cultural diversity by drawing to Utah miners and families from otherwise underrepresented ethnic and national backgrounds. It ignited strife, particularly between labor and management, but those issues often spread into or connected with other conflicts in and between communities, classes, and factions. It influenced political platforms, generated candidates, and helped decide elections. Throughout the state, mining dramatically transformed the landscape, most obviously at what has been called the world's largest open-pit mine, which removed much of a mountain on the west side of Salt Lake Valley, but at innumerable other places too.
Despite all mining has done and meant, there has not been, until now, a book that surveyed its history in Utah. From the Ground Up fills that gap in a collection of essays by leading experts, among them historians Thomas G. Alexander, Martha Sonntag Bradley-Evans, James E. Fell Jr., Laurence P. James, Brigham D. Madsen, Philip F. Notarianni, Allen Kent Powell, W. Paul Reeve, Raye C. Ringholz, and Janet Burton Seegmiller and geologists J. Wallace Gwynn and William T. Parry. The book is divided into three comprehensive parts. The first looks at "The Ground of Utah Mining": the geology that has produced extractable minerals, the economic history of the industry, "father of Utah mining" Patrick E. Connor, and the lore of mines and miners. Part II reviews the history of a handful of particularly significant mineral industries: salines, coal, uranium, and beryllium. The last part takes a region-by-region approach to survey the important, primarily for hard-rock mining, areas of the state, including places from Silver Reef to Alta, the East Tintic Range to the Uinta Basin, and Park City to Frisco.
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