Nemesis: The Death Star (Hardcover)

~ Richard Muller (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Pedestrian account of an exciting theory about the extinction of the dinosaurs. Was it because their bodies grew too big for their brains? Because wily mammals raided their food supplies? Forget these schoolboy theories, says physicist Muller: the big reptiles bit the dust when a death star - code-name Nemesis - hurled a massive comet or asteroid into the earth 65 million years ago. Moreover, Nemesis, which orbits our sun from about three light-years away, unleashes such disasters every 26 million years. The frightful conclusion, for those with an eye on the future: humans are next on the hit-list - in 13 million years or so. The best part of the story circles around Muller's mentor, Luis Alvarez, a Nobel-laureate physicist who first suggested that a five-mile-wide asteroid killed the dinosaurs. Too bad Muller didn't stick with his portrait of this grown-up Mr. Wizard, who counts himself an explorer in the tradition of Sir Richard Francis Burton and leaps lightly from one brilliant invention to another (his most unusual being a method akin to X-raying for examining the interior of Egyptian pyramids). Instead, we are treated to a workmanlike blow-by-blow account of how Muller evolved the Nemesis theory - a fairly tepid tale of scientific research and analysis warmed up now and then by outward events (such as the media firestorm following public disclosure of the theory). In other words, this is a sort of Double Helix for the slide-rule boys, but with none of James Watson's nastiness or punch. Too bad, too. that what's being debated sounds substantially less profound than the fundamental structure of the gene - and, as far as Muller's death-star notion goes, far less convincing; while evidence mounts for Alvarez's collision theory, Nemesis remains unaccepted by the bulk of the scientific community. Astronomy and dinosaur buffs will eat this up - the terrific title alone will grab a lot of readers - but others may find themselves nodding off. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

In 1984 Dr Muller caused international controversy with his theory that a killer star, christened "Nemesis", is orbiting the sun and causing cataclysmic comet storms to batter the earth every 26 million years. Greeted with disbelief and derision, the "Nemesis" hypothesis has nonetheless withstood attempts to demolish it and has provided explanations for a variety of phenomena, including the dramatic disappearance 65 million years ago of the earth's dinosaur population. In this book the author examines himself and his motivations as rigorously as the bizarre assumptions of the "Nemesis" theory. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 193 pages
• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicholson; 1st edition (May 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555841732
• ISBN-13: 978-1555841737
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #621,564 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The science of believing in things which can't be seen, November 19, 1997

By	Kate Evans ([e-mail]) (San Diego, California) - See all my reviews

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nemesis: It May Still Be Out There !, May 2, 2004

By	frankbif "frankbif" (Wesley Hills, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nemesis: The Death Star - Story of a Scientific Revolution (Paperback)

"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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, October 17, 2000

By	Michael J Cruz (Hollister, California United States) - See all my reviews

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.