Zalasiewicz J., Williams M. Ocean Worlds

Oxford University Press, 2014. — 315 p.
As we walk and drive through our wide landscapes, it can be hard to remember that most of the Earth’s surface is taken up by another world. It is a liquid world, kilometres deep, within which we cannot breathe, although many other organisms can. For most of our history it was, except for its surface and shallowest reaches, inaccessible and invisible: the distant stars seemed within closer reach. One could imagine—and people did—monsters as fabulous as the mighty kraken, and ancient submerged civilizations in those deeps. It is about a century and a half since humans began to seriously explore its depths. In the last few decades it has become clear that our own oceanic world can at times surpass fiction and fable—and only in the last few years has it become clear that, in the distant reaches of outer space, there are many other ocean worlds of astonishing variety. Then there is the impact of the Earth’s oceans on our own land-based lives, which is seen to be ever greater the more it is examined— although for some time we have known that the oceans are the source of life-giving rains, and of fish for our dinner plates too. This book is an attempt to give some picture of the workings of ocean worlds—our own, obviously—and others too, through time and across space.