7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nemesis: It May Still Be Out There !, May 2, 2004
"Nemesis: The Death Star" is the story of a possible explanation for periodic comet and asteroid impacts on Earth and other members of the Solar System. In brief, Dr. Richard Muller of Cal-Berkley believes that our Sun may have an as yet undetermined companion star (remember, many stars are part of binary systems).
There are about 3,000 stars which meet the basic qualifications for our Sun's binary companion: visual magnitude of 7 to 12, probably a Red Dwarf, and probably between 1-3 light-years orbital distance from the Sun. The distances for the stars which could possibly be the Nemesis star have NOT been measured, though the stars themselves have been catalogued. This is a tedious, time-consuming and, unfortunately, not very pressing matter for most astronomers. Hence, despite the widespread debates on the Nemesis Theory over all these years, it still has been left unresolved, indeed, the basic scientific measurements have not been done (though Muller and others are re-starting the effort).
If our Sun has a Nemesis companion, then every few million years it would come into contact with our Solar System by impacting the Ort Cloud. The Ort Cloud is the outer halo of objects tied to our Sun and the Solar System, and includes comets and other fragmentary matter which often have long, elliptical orbits. The Ort Cloud extends out almost to a light-year, or some 50,000 AU (astronomical unit = 93 million miles, the distance from the Sun to Earth). By comparison, Pluto, the most distant planet, is only about 50 AU distant from the Sun.
Nemesis would alter the route of some of those objects, throwing them "inward" towards the Solar System and causing the cratering so visible on our Moon and the planet Mercury. These impacts are less visible on Earth (erosion, plate tectonics, continental changes) but we have several "smoking guns" coinciding with some well-known impacts from Earth's history, most noticeably the impacts at the time of the dinosaur extinction (Cretaceous, 65 million years ago) and The Great Dying (Permian-Triassic, 251 million years ago).
You can see updates on Muller's Nemesis Theory on his website, which also includes interesting essays on scientific topics of current interest, like terrorism and climate change. Lately, Muller's research has included models on the potential long-period stability of an assumed Nemesis orbit.
Muller's book goes into details on the various scientific methods they used to determine possible impact time-lines and the causes of extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Era. It is pretty easy reading, you do not need to be an expert on astronomy or physics to understand or enjoy the story (it reads like a novel, as other reviewers have noted) and Richard Muller is a very good storyteller.
The only negative is that the book is out-of-print and might be tough to come by. On the other hand, if the search for Nemesis pans out, I am sure Dr. Muller will do the long-awaited 2nd Edition of the book and it will be readily available.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book, October 17, 2000
This review is from: Nemesis: The Death Star (Hardcover)
Dr. Muller is my Physics professor here at U.C. Berkeley, and he is quite an exceptional man. This book reads very easy, often explaining the most complicated scientific ideas and theories in easy to understand ways. The accumulated knowledge that this book provides is almost as spectacular as the description of the journey through that knowledge. I did not buy this book, it was actually given to our class by Dr. Muller himself, but if you have even an inkling of interest in not only science, but also in exploration and discovery, then I would sincerely encourage you to try to find it, if not thru a used bookstore then perhaps at a local public library. It's a relatively short and quickly read work, and is well worth the time you put into it. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The science of believing in things which can't be seen, November 18, 1997
This review is from: Nemesis: The Death Star (Hardcover)
Dr. Muller is one of those rare scientists - he can write as well (or better) than he can think. When writing this book, he must have been awake on all counts, I think. The theory expounded upon in this book, the idea that our Sun has a dim companion that we have not yet found, is both fascinating and controversial. The evidence is very well presented, with only an occasional lapse into inpenetrable scispeak, and the idea is one that is compelling to anyone who studies evolutionary theory. What if this dim companion that we have not seen yet does exist? It means that we have quite possibly stumbled upon a way to predict the end of the world as we know it (assuming we don't lend a helping hand of our own, of course...). This dim companion of Muller's, which he names Nemesis, supposedly perturbs the orbits of enough comets and meteoric material that the "hit rate" on our little ball of gas goes up considerably - thus inducing the same symptoms which now are considered to have contributed greatly to the last hurrah of the dinosaurs, i.e., large impacts on the surface of the earth. This phenomenon, which causes nuclear winter-like symptoms, can also be seen in the past geological record and seems to be somewhat cyclical. The real problem here is that the cycle proposed is so bloody long and our dating methods so bloody inaccurate that you can't really prove anything no matter how much arguement is put forth in writing. But as absurd as Muller's arguements may sound to the layman, the bottom line is that he has just as much chance of being right about this as anyone else has. The other bottom line here is that this book is well-written and intelligent, though I would say that anyone who got lost in science classes in high school would probably get lost in this book, too. So, if you want to know what you need to worry about in the next billion years or so, find a copy of this book and start figuring ways to get off this mudball.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
