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Nemesis Encore

Hello List,

Just in case someone is interested in it! This book review also has a
nice, somewhat macabre but very funny cartoon. If someone is interested
I can email it privately in JPEG format.


Best regards,

Bernd

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Books and the Sky

The Nemesis Affair (Sky & Telescope, January 1987, pp. 39-40):

David M. Raup (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1985, 220 pages, ISBN
0-393-02342-7, $14.95).

Controversy is the very stuff of science. The clash of ideas and egos as
we struggle to explain the universe around us is an exciting adventure,
both for witnesses and participants. And out of this controversy comes
progress.
Since 1980, few tasks of science have been as controversial as that of
explaining the major biological extinctions in the Earth's past - great
dyings-out of species followed by development of new species and new
ecological orders. Once the domain of paleontologists alone, the problem
was thrust into the astronomical realm in 1980. A group of Berkeley
scientists led by the father-and-son team of Luis and Walter Alvarez
found evidence of meteoritic material in the sediments at the
Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction boundary. Dating back 65 million years,
that boundary is best known for the death of the dinosaurs.
The paper by the Alvarezes and their colleagues burst upon the
scientific world much like the 100-million-megaton impact of the
10-kilometer asteroid they hypothesized. Astronomers specializing in
asteroid and comet studies, geologists knowledgeable in cratering
dynamics, and atmospheric specialists on global climate modeling were
drawn into the fray. Everyone had a different idea, ranging from
dinosaurs poisoned by the cyanogen in comets (shades of Halley's comet
in 1910!) to denials that sudden extinctions ever occurred.
An important offshoot of this incredible debate was the first proposals
regarding "nuclear winter." And in 1983 came the most amazing report of
all: the extinctions appeared to be periodic, coming almost like
clockwork every 26 million years. A new frenzy of scientific activity
ensued, producing suggestions of an unseen solar companion star beyond
the Oort cloud, and a 10th planet beyond Pluto.
David Raup has a special vantage point for reporting on all this. Along
with Jack Sepkoski of the University of Chicago, he authored the
controversial 1983 paper that claimed a 26-million-year periodicity.
Earlier he had been a reviewer of the original impact hypothesis paper
by the Berkeley group. Raup can describe the battle from the front
lines.
At the same time, Raup has provided a thoughtful examination of belief
systems in science, using as example "The Nemesis Affair," as he calls
it (named for the putative death star in a distant 26 million year orbit
about the Sun). How do scientists respond to radical new ideas? How did
Raup himself, an acknowledged expert in paleontology, respond to the
astounding claim made by a group of upstart physicists that they had
solved the century-old problem of extinctions? What role does the
popular press play in these controversies?
Raup's interesting tale is naturally a bit biased toward his own views.
Astronomical readers might find the book slightly heavy on paleontology
and thin on astronomy. But if there is a weakness, it is that the
telling is a little too dry. To understand the Nemesis affair fully, you
must picture the colorful personalities, hear the stormy meetings with
their claims and counterclaims, and feel the tension at debates and
confrontations. This is missing from Raup's accounting, and the book is
the lesser for it.
If everyone involved in the Nemesis affair were to write his or her
version, the collected stories would make a fascinating history of how
science works, or sometimes doesn't quite work. It would certainly help
unravel the mystery of how we make progress in understanding the
universe. How we learn things often seems as interesting as what we
actually find. As my travel agent always says, in the course of booking
me for a 16-hour flight, "getting there is half the fun."
Paul Weissman: A specialist in cometary research at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Weissman has done analyses of the role comets might play in
extinctions on Earth.

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