The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science / Edition 2

by David M. Raup

Overview

"David Raup is, to put it baldly and justly, the world's most brilliant paleontologist."-Stephen Jay Gould

Nemesis is the name given by scientists to a (theoretical) small companion star to our sun. Every 26 million years, Nemesis's orbit brings it close enough to the sun to bombard our solar system with billions of comets. While most of the comets will float harmlessly beyond the outer planets, some passing through the sun's Oort Cloud will be deflected by its gravitational force toward Earth. Such a "large-body impact," the Nemesis theory holds, was responsible for the mass extinction that led to the demise of the dinosaurs. The next impact, millions of years from now, might very well extinguish humanity. In this lively, fascinating, and often disturbing book, updated and revised with the latest scientific evidence on terrestrial impacts, David M. Raup re-explores the controversies of the Nemesis theory from the trenches of the scientific community, and investigates the issues-both scientific and philosophical-of mass extinction. "A fascinating insider's view of scientists at work-and at odds-on the issues of extinction, evolution, and the fate of dinosaurs."-John Noble Wilford

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393319187
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/17/1999
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

David M. Raup is the Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor and a statistical paleontologist at the University of Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

In recounting the ``Nemesis Affair,'' Raup aims to elucidate the scientific and journalistic climate in which the idea was born. The story begins with a 1980 paper in Science implicating impact of an extraterrestrial body with Earth as the cause of dinosaur extinction. It proceeds through the later hypothesis that mass extinctions are time-periodic and astrophysicists' suggestions (including ``Nemesis,'' an undiscovered small companion star to our sun) to explain the periodicity. All the hypotheses are still under debate. Raup, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago and a participant in the ``Nemesis Affair,'' is a clear-eyed and frank, if not completely unbiased, reporter. His book makes good reading for anyone curious about ``Nemesis'' or about science. Margery C. Coombs, Zoology Dept., Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst

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