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BookmarkNemesis is the name given by scientists to a (theoretical) small companion star to our sun.
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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..
For more information about the title The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science, read the full description at Amazon.com, or see the following related books:
Night Comes to the Cretaceous: Comets, Craters, Controversy, and the Last Days of the Dinosaurs — What killed the dinosaurs? For more than a century, this question has been one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science. But, in 1980, Nobel ... > read more
Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions — This is a book about the dramatic periods in the Earth's history called mass extinctions - short periods (by geological standards) when life nearly ... > read more
Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago — Some 250 million years ago, the earth suffered the greatest biological crisis in its history. Around 95% of all living species died out--a global ... > read more
Future Evolution — Everyone wonders what tomorrow holds, but what will the real future look like? Not decades or even hundreds of years from now, but thousands or ... > read more
