Volcanic Ash and Coachella

This volcanic ash from the Iceland volcano is quite a story. Not that it is that unusual but how it has affected so many lives. Some bands and some crew members of bands couldn't make it to Coachella this year.

I wonder how comfortable those first few flights will be crossing the ocean. I hope they really inspect the planes the first few months after they start flying again.

But it also led me to think about some other things. Like more dust in the sky, the death of dinosaurs, and a Shriekback song.

All of that comes from a book by UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller.

It's a fascinating book about the Nemesis theory and the death of the dinosaurs. It also helped inspire the Shriekback song Nemesis. If you can find the book it is a great read on this topic. In fact all of Muller's books are a great read. The theory is that not only did something hit the earth and kick up a dust cloud that blocked the sun and chocked off lots of life, but he explains that according to some geological research it happens to earth about every 26 million years. The book goes into detail about the research they did. It reads like a mystery novel.

From Wikipedia Nemesis is a hypothetical hard-to see red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU (about 1-2 light years), somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. This star was originally postulated to exist as part of a hypothesis to explain a perceived cycle of mass extinctions in the geological record, which seem to occur once every 26 million years or so."

Here's the opening of the book.

And here's part of a NY Times article from Muller.

"They had made a careful compilation of extinctions and found that large catastrophes among sea creatures were not rare events but occurred on a regular time schedule: every 26 million years. We are roughly halfway between periodic extinctions now, the paper went on. The next one isn't due for another 13 million years."

So to mis-quote Young Frankenstein, "Could be worse, could be Nemesis."