Talk:Eugene Merle Shoemaker

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This article is a disgrace. This man, and later his wife, became a voice of truth, ridiculed by geologists and astronomers, about the nature and reality of impacts. If humanity does survive an impact event, it will be because of the preparation he sparked in humanity - and only after the discovery of the Chicxulub Crater, decades after his insights had been ridiculed. I will be doing a research paper on this man and his contributions as soon as I can, but in the mean time, I urge everyone with more free time to do the same and expand this short article.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.60.88.36 (talk) 12:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I removed what appeared to be a duplicate entry of text from the header "scientific contributions" to the bottom of the article. Here is the text I removed: (snip) == Scientific contributions == David H. Levy, For his Ph.D. at Princeton, Dr. Shoemaker conclusively showed that Barringer Meteor Crater, located near Winslow, Arizona, arose from a meteor impact. Shoemaker has done more than any other person to advance the idea that sudden geologic changes can arise from asteroid strikes and that asteroid strikes are common over geologic time periods. Previously, astroblemes were thought to be remnants of extinct volcanoes -- even on the Moon.

He gained this insight after inspecting craters that remained after underground atomic bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site at Yucca Flats. He found a ring of ejected material; in both cases it included shocked quartz (coesite), a form of quartz that has a microscopically unique structure caused by intense pressure.

Dr. Shoemaker helped pioneer the field of astrogeology by founding the Astrogeology Research Program of the USGS in 1961. He was its first director. He was prominently involved in the Lunar Ranger missions to the Moon, which showed that the Moon was covered with a wide size range of impact craters. Dr. Shoemaker was also involved in the training of the American astronauts. He was set to be the first scientist to walk on the Moon but was disqualified due to a disorder of his adrenal gland.

Coming to Caltech in 1969, he started a systematic search for Earth orbit-crossing asteroids, which resulted in the discovery of several families of such asteroids, including the Apollo asteroids.

Dr. Shoemaker received a National Medal of Science in 1992. In 1993, he co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. This comet was unique in that it provided the first opportunity for scientists to observe the planetary impact of a comet. Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter in 1994. David H. Levy, Dr. Shoemaker died in a car accident in Alice Springs, Australia in July of 1997. Some of his ashes were carried to the Moon by the Lunar Prospector space probe. To date, he is the only person to have been buried on the moon.David H. Levy, (snip)

I'm not sure about he "David H. Levy" text. Perhaps he input the text?

Regarding the discussion below, a shock product of a high speed impact is Quartz --> Coesite at pressures greater than 30 GPa. See the on-line book _Traces of Catastrophe_ by Bevan French on page 33 (in the PDF on-line version). A microphoto of diaplectic quartz wih coesite crystals can be found on page 41 in figure 4.12. Additional discussion of use on page 42, paragraph 2.

art

Does kozite really exist? Every reference but one that i found using various search engines returned foreign language pages, and one seemed to translate this to "goats", although I can't be positive. Elf | Talk 23:45, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I forget the synonyms, but I think another (less controversial) term is "shocked quartz". I'll replace. --- hike395 02:39, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think you are thinking of Coesite which is the shocked mineral that Shoemaker found at many impact craters including meteor crater. User:jscotti 02:56, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Much better to both answers! I put coesite back into the article as an alternative to the shocked quartz. Thanks.  (I wasn't sure whether an anon user was pulling our collective leg--)  Elf | Talk 04:25, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The latest move broke almost all of the links, due to double re-direction. Groan. I've done a somewhat ugly fix, which points all redirect pages here. But, do we really want the article title to have Dr. Shoemaker's middle name? How many other Eugene Shoemakers are there? -- hike395 00:57, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Did Dr. Shoemaker experiment on human skulls?
On November 15, 2005, someone inserted some information about Dr, Shoemaker in the article about him conducting ballistics tests in the mid 1960's on human skulls filled with simulated brain tissue by shooting rifle bullets at the skulls. The purpose of this macabre test was apparantly to determine whether a skull "recoils" towards the person shooting when hit by the bullet.

The passage reads as follows:

"Dr. Shoemaker did not restrict his interests to colliding astronomical objects, and he believed in experimentation to prove his beliefs. During a special CBS News investigative report in the mid-1960s about the assassination of President Kennedy hosted by Walter Cronkite, Eugene demonstrated what he had discovered during tests with his own rifle and human skulls. A bullet fired into the back of the skull with simulated brain material inside would cause it to recoil rearward, towards the shooter. This supported the Warren Commission’s findings, and refuted the ideas of conspiracy theorists, who believed that such recoil can only occur due to a shot from the front."

If Dr. Shoemaker did conduct such experiments on human skulls I am interested in reviewing the results. Though, there is a possibility that he did not conduct any such experiments. While the author writes in a style of great familiarity with Dr. Shoemaker ("Eugene demonstrated ...."), the information was posted anonymously. Also,it was posted at the same time someone posted Dr. Shoemaker's name as the expert who proved the "skull-recoil" theory on Wikipedia's Kennedy Assassination site. Then the Kennedy site was linked to the site so the reader could see that the information is purportedly true.

This counter-intuitive result (skulls recoiling towards the shooter) may be true, or not, and Dr. Shoemaker may or not have conducted such experiments. However, the Kennedy site has many true believers who are committed to certain theories. In this situation, it may be a highly committed person supporting the "lone gunman" theory (where Lee Harvey Oswald is the alleged lone gunman) and wants to rationalize why Presient Kennedy went quickly backwards (towards Oswald) after being fatally wounded to the head. The "answer" is that Dr. Shoemaker experimented and proved a human skull recoils towards the shooter when the bullet hits the skull.

Please point me in the direction of the study, if it exists, by a post on this page. RPJ 08:25, 19 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Pending external reference, I have deleted the paragraph from this page. We can restore if someone supports the result. -- hike395 16:22, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

What is the connection between *Genealogy info and Dr Shoemaker? If I waded through pages and pages of the Schliesser-Hicks Family Tree would I eventually find Eugene Merle Shoemaker? It doesn't exactly jump right out, and I'm wondering if this is a relevant link. --Cvmbo 17:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Article classification
This article meets the requirements for Class C. The subject, Eugene Shoemaker, should be rated at least Mid importance because of his impact on planetary geology. Bruin2 (talk) 01:45, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

"that we know of"
"He is the only person whose ashes are buried on a celestial body that we know of (the Moon)." Why is the qualifier necessary? Is it really plausible that someone else's remains are on a celestial body but nobody knows about it? Nate Biggs (talk) 05:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

sik.5
gg 2409:4052:E8D:C64A:986D:90FB:817D:6425 (talk) 17:06, 3 January 2022 (UTC)