Carolyn
Shoemaker built a successful career as a mother, wife and homemaker.
Then, when her children were grown, she decided to start a new career
after age 50.
And she became one of the leading scientists in her
field.
Today, Shoemaker is an internationally known astronomer,
the discoverer of 32 comets and more than 800 asteroids.
She is on the staff of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff,
Ariz., and a volunteer in astrogeologic studies with the U.S. Geological
Survey.
She may be best known as co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy
9 comet, which struck Jupiter in July 1994, but her work ranges
from meteorite studies to investigation of ancient impact structures.
Shoemaker will present the inaugural Michel T. Halbouty
Lecture on June 4 at the 2001 AAPG annual meeting in Denver. In
her presentation, "Through a Crystal Ball," she'll examine a subject
of potentially Earth-shattering importance.
"There was a time (when) people here on Earth thought
the planets were surrounded by crystal balls and nothing could penetrate
that," she said.
"It doesn't take a crystal ball to tell us we're
going to be hit by a comet or an asteroid of varying (possible)
size."
That's a likelihood -- but not a prediction of catastrophe,
she quickly added.
"A lot of people say 'Impact! We're going to be destroyed!'
-- á la the impact at the Cretaceous boundary," she said. "But those
don't happen very often."
When astronomers detect and track objects in space
today, they can predict the odds of an Earth collision using powerful
computer models. The occasional report of impending doom should
be dismissed as heaven-high hype, according to Shoemaker.
"Thanks to some sophisticated computer technology,
we can say, 'Yes, it's possible that this certain object of a certain
size will impact the Earth at some time,'" she noted.
"The trouble is, everyone who spots one of these
things reports it to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass.
They put these on the Web, and when the media get a hold of something
without time for confirmation, they run away with it."
Lead times for predicting a possible Earth strike
should provide plenty of opportunity to do more than duck. She said
the length of time between a first warning and an actual impact
would be "desirably, 50 years, but 20 years isn't bad."
Astronomers work in a timeframe of 100 years or more
in tracing near-Earth orbit (NEO) objects, she noted. According
to NASA, the chance of any presently known NEO hitting Earth in
the next 100 years is negligible.
Chapter Two
Shoemaker was married to famed geologist and AAPG
member Eugene Shoemaker, who founded the USGS astrogeology center
in Flagstaff. Her husband died in an automobile accident in July
1997. Shoemaker herself was injured in the crash, which occurred
during the couple's annual trip to study impact craters in Australia.
Over a 13-year period, the two had studied more than
20 impact structures there, mapping them, doing magnetic and gravimetric
surveys, searching for impact glass and meteorites -- doing whatever
had not already been done by the Australians.
By the end of that period, other impact structures,
some subsurface, were being found in the course of drilling for
oil. Among those were the Tookoonooka and Tidibilly craters.
Her career in astronomy began in 1980, after she
asked her husband to suggest a pastime.
"It was not until our children left, the three of
them, that I turned to my husband, Gene, and said, 'Do you have
anything that would interest me the same way geology interests you?'
That's like, 48 hours a day," she recalled.
As it happened, he was looking for help in a search
for objects in space that might intercept Earth's orbit, "especially
things that could have a chance to hit Earth."
Shoemaker majored in history and political science
at Chico State College in California, where she was a cum laude
graduate in 1949 and received a master's degree in 1950.
Faced with the possibility of entering a completely
different field 30 years later... she jumped at it.
And she jumped into her new career, as well. She
became a research assistant at the California Institute of Technology
and then a research professor of astronomy at Northern Arizona University,
where she earned a doctorate in science in 1990.
With Eugene Shoemaker, she has been honored with
numerous medals and awards for science and research during the past
14 years. In 1996, she became a Fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and received NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement
Medal.
She has found or co-discovered more comets than any
other living astronomer. Of the more than 800 asteroids she has
discovered, more than 300 are officially designated with numbers.
Shoemaker also developed new stereoscopic techniques
for scanning films at the Palomar Observatory in California. Those
techniques more than doubled the potential rate of sky coverage
of the observatory's 46cm Schmidt camera.
Craters -- and Oil Potential
Despite recent knee-replacement surgery, her work
goes on at a fast pace. She continues to hunt for comets with associate
David Levy, the Canadian-born astronomer, journalist and lecturer,
who also lives in Arizona.
"It's still the old-fashioned technique of photography,"
she said, "but we can look close to the sun to avoid the other sky
surveys."
In addition to staking out their own expanse of sky,
the near-sun approach gives them a decided advantage in comet gazing:
That's where comets glow most brightly, Shoemaker noted.
Another continuing project is finishing her husband's
papers and research reports. That involves working through "a big
backlog of Australian crater work," gathered by them during their
13 years of field trips, she said.
She thinks the cratering work will interest petroleum
geologists, since impact craters indicate a possible oil reservoir.
About 25 percent of the Earth's impact craters are associated with
economic resources of some kind.
"Quite a number of the craters have been discovered
in Australia and also in the United States that are subsurface and
are oil bearing," she said. "When there is an impact, the area beneath
the impact is full of brecciated, broken-up rock, and it's a good,
good reservoir."
Most impact craters share similarities, according
to Shoemaker. Large structures typically have a central uplift or
peak, and may show several ring depressions, what she called a "rock
into mudpuddle" spreading pattern.
Yet the craters are different enough to reward individual
examination.
"Each structure we've studied has something new to
offer," she said.
Catch a Falling Star?
Advances in space exploration are bringing new mysteries
for Shoemaker to ponder. During the past year, she observed the
results of NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission.
NASA named the mission's space probe NEAR Shoemaker
in honor of Eugene Shoemaker, who had long spoken of the importance
of a mission to an asteroid.
For one year, the probe orbited the asteroid Eros,
196 million miles from Earth, sending back about 160,000 images.
At the end of the mission, NASA officials decided
to try a chancy maneuver -- setting down NEAR Shoemaker on the surface
of the 21-mile-long asteroid.
"I actually went back to the Advanced Physics Lab
to see it go down," Shoemaker said. "I can tell you that the feeling
of elation was just enormous."
While the controlled crash-landing of the NEAR Shoemaker
craft made headlines, asteroid specialists puzzled over the information
provided by the probe's abundant images. Shoemaker found that the
data led to more questions than answers.
"One of the things that amazed us is that Eros had
so many boulders of all sizes on the surface," she said. "Eros doesn't
have much gravity, so what are all the boulders doing there?"
By her own description, Shoemaker also continues
to work with the USGS as an "emeritus volunteer," mainly in impact
crater studies. She feels she has no time to waste in her delayed
second career.
"I don't have time to retire," she said. "I have
too much to do, and not enough time."