guivre wrote:This is the official link between Muller, Luis and Walter Alvarez, from a general review of the book, Nemesis:hoi.polloi wrote: Speaking of divine sparks, what made you write about Nemesis, guivre? It's a brilliant connection you made. Remind us again of what this particular excerpt you linked to (which brings us to Richard A. Muller's site) has to do with the dinosaur issue? You're saying Muller's connected to the same Alvarez who claims the terrible lizards bit the dust due to an enormous ass-terror-oid collision?
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cienc ... esis02.htm
The premise of the companion star is not currently accepted mainstream science now, but the iridium theory is.Muller's idea for Nemesis came to him 1983. Luis Alvarez, then an emeritus professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, and his son Walter had recently put forth the theory that a giant impact had wiped out the dinosaurs. (This idea, like so many others that are now widely accepted, met with staunch criticism when it was introduced because it, too, was not mainstream).
Around the same time, two other researchers had suggested yet another controversial idea, that mass extinctions occurred at regular intervals -- every 26 million years or so. Scientists immediately folded the ideas into a new and breathtaking possibility: Impacts by space rocks were causing massive global species destruction every 26 million years.
Luis Alvarez was Richard Muller's mentor, and he suggested that Muller try to debunk the periodicity argument. Pondering this, Muller dreamed up the fanciful companion to the Sun as a possible cause, and with Berkeley's Piet Hut and Marc Davis of Princeton, worked out the details.
Muller gave the object the name of the Greek goddess of retribution -- fitting for a killer star that roamed stealthily beyond the solar system flicking comets at dinosaurs.
In the end, the idea looked surprisingly plausible to Muller and his colleagues, and the results of their work were ultimately published in the journal Nature in 1984. Muller then wrote a book about Nemesis, and he has pursued the companion star, while also doing other research, ever since.
From the Smithstonian, this is a run down of what is accepted as the dinosaur's extinction event:
http://www.paleobiology.si.edu/dinosaur ... why_2.html
(Personally, I read a lot of science/medical books and journals, pop and otherwise, at the start of my art career I had planned to go into scientific illustration. Yes, I felt duped after reading Physics for Future Presidents because of the 9/11 material and having already been familiar with September Clues at that point. It did make me wonder how much I could trust other scientific theories among other things.)Alvarez Hypothesis: Origin and Evidence
In the late 1970's geologist Walter Alvarez, and his father, Nobel-prize winning physicist Luis Alvarez, identified an unusual clay layer at the K/T boundary in Italy. This clay contained an unusually high concentration of the rare-earth element iridium 30 times the level typically found in the Earth's crust. Why was the discovery of iridium so important? Although iridium is rare in the crust, it is abundant in many meteorites and asteroids as well as the Earth's core. With this evidence, Alvarez hypothesized that an asteroid must have struck the Earth right at the K/T boundary. Further investigation has revealed that this iridium-rich layer of clay occurs at more than 100 sites around the world, providing evidence that this was truly a worldwide event.
It was estimated that to produce the amount of iridium in the clay layer, the impact object would have been 10 km in diameter. Further evidence of an impact was discovered in the form of small grains of impact-shocked quartz and beads of impact glass (tektites) within the clay layer. Shocked quartz is formed by high-pressure shock waves, and is found at nuclear bomb sites and in meteor craters. Tektites are formed from the condensation of vaporized meteorite particles. Although shocked quartz has been found in K/T layers worldwide, tektites decrease in size with increasing distance from the impact site until they are altogether absent.
These pieces, along with high levels of iridium, provide evidence for an extraterrestrial impact at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Thus, the end of the dinosaurs’ reign may have been caused by an asteroid, not by sea level change or volcanism. Initially this theory was highly controversial, but today an extraterrestrial impact is considered to be a key factor in the K/T extinction event.
One of the main objections to the Alvarez theory was the absence of a 65-million-year-old crater anywhere on the Earth’s surface. Surely such an enormous asteroid impact would have left a sizable crater behind. In 1991, geologists discovered evidence for a huge crater at Chicxulub (pronounced CHIK-shoo-loob), on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Although the crater had long since been buried by hundreds of meters of sediment, surveys of magnetic and gravitational fields revealed its circular structure. In addition, recent sensitive topographic mapping has shown a low mound that represents part of the crater’s rim. At 180 km across, and dated to 65 mya, the crater is of the right size and age to have been caused by a 10 km asteroid hitting Earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
His name is Richard A. Muller. He has a .gov address, being part of the U.S. Energy Department and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and he claims to have determined more complete stories of:
- The "dinosaur" history (fossil records, statistics and "what killed the dinosaurs" i.e.; giant asteroid strike)
- Outer space physics (NASA, cosmos, et al)
- The "terrorist attack" of 9/11 (both in support of al Qaeda being responsible and the "bin Laden is already dead in 2002!" cover story)
- Nuclear physics (nuclear reactors, bombs and associated politics)
- Global warming (the latest science on ice ages and so on)
He claims to have an interest in photography and magic. He claims his new book covers "... analysis of Fukushima, the Gulf Oil Spill, Global Warming ..." and its title is Energy for Future Presidents arrogantly pre-empting, apparently, any new science that will come about in four years. (Or are we being told in a sly way that he decides the science that will be uncovered in the next four years?) He even posts about the suspiciously PsyOp-like Lost TV series and his attendance at a Paul McCartney concert (?!) which would be read by anyone familiar with 'Faul McCartney' theories as a nod to the game he's playing.
Disturbingly, under his 'free time' section, he simply writes (claiming no particular involvement): "GreenGov.biz helps nations prepare for Copenhagen, work towards energy security, and it helps companies sort out the confusion about global warming and energy."
Is there any suspected or confirmed modern hoax this man hasn't touched and/or written for in some way? I'm surprised he hasn't talked about his mother's death in a Nazi concentration camp.
He also seems to want to paint a great hero figure like Jesus as someone ... well, kind of like himself. In a historical novel about Jesus he authored, it is revealed that Jesus desperately used magic tricks and deceptions to "get people" to accept the "truth" of his revelations! Not a terribly original idea but in context with Mr. Muller's own life of lies and deceptions, it's kind of sad. Surely, we're all little heroes of our own micro-dramas, and he can be admired for being so honest about his um ... dishonesty. But this guy is almost a parody of the types of people we've speculated as being behind the hoaxes.
We have his contact information, but ...
I'm trying to think of where to even begin with someone like this.To contact me
send email to [email protected]
or snailmail to:
Richard A. Muller
Dept of Physics
390 LeConte Hall
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720-7300
Or call me during the day at:
(510) 486-7430