William Napier (astronomer)

Last updated

William M. (Bill) Napier (born 29 June 1940 in Perth, Scotland) is the author of five high tech thriller novels and a number of nonfiction science books.

Contents

Career

He received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1963 and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1966, both from the University of Glasgow.

Napier is a professional astronomer who has worked at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, the University of Oxford and Armagh Observatory. He is currently an honorary professor of Astrobiology in the Center for Astrobiology at Cardiff University, which describes him as "a leading figure in the dynamics and physics of comets, and a pioneer of the modern versions of catastrophism." [1] And honorary professor at the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, University of Buckingham, which describes him as, "a pioneer of modern studies of the impact hazard due to asteroids and comets," and also as having, "carried out an investigation of long-running claims of anomalous QSO/galaxy associations." [2] His research work focuses on comets and cosmology. The result of his collaboration with Victor Clube and others on the role of giant comets in Earth history is known as "coherent catastrophism." [3]

According to Napier, 13,000 years ago the earth was affected by a major, rapid cooling event that caused the extinction of a large number of species and a major disruption of paleoindian cultures. Napier argues for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis that the cooling event was caused by the collision with "a dense trail of material from a large disintegrating comet," [4] an idea that has been refuted. [5] He is a member of the Comet Research Group, [6] which raises money for, and conducts research in this area as well as biblical archaeology. [7]

Selected bibliography

Fiction (as Bill Napier)

Nonfiction

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lonsdaleite</span> Hexagonal lattice allotrope of carbon

Lonsdaleite, also called hexagonal diamond in reference to the crystal structure, is an allotrope of carbon with a hexagonal lattice, as opposed to the cubical lattice of conventional diamond. It is found in nature in meteorite debris; when meteors containing graphite strike the Earth, the immense heat and stress of the impact transforms the graphite into diamond, but retains graphite's hexagonal crystal lattice. Lonsdaleite was first identified in 1967 from the Canyon Diablo meteorite, where it occurs as microscopic crystals associated with ordinary diamond.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panspermia</span> Hypothesis on the interstellar spreading of primordial life

Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms. Panspermia is a fringe theory with little support amongst mainstream scientists. Critics argue that it does not answer the question of the origin of life but merely places it on another celestial body. It is also criticized because it cannot be tested experimentally.

<i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America</i> Academic journal of the National Academy of Sciences

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences, published since 1915, and publishes original research, scientific reviews, commentaries, and letters. According to Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2021 impact factor of 12.779. PNAS is the second most cited scientific journal, with more than 1.9 million cumulative citations from 2008 to 2018. In the mass media, PNAS has been described variously as "prestigious", "sedate", "renowned" and "high impact".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chandra Wickramasinghe</span> British astronomer (born 1939)

Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe is a Sri Lankan-born British mathematician, astronomer and astrobiologist of Sinhalese ethnicity. His research interests include the interstellar medium, infrared astronomy, light scattering theory, applications of solid-state physics to astronomy, the early Solar System, comets, astrochemistry, the origin of life and astrobiology. A student and collaborator of Fred Hoyle, the pair worked jointly for over 40 years as influential proponents of panspermia. In 1974 they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic, later proven to be correct.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Usselo</span> Village in Overijssel, Netherlands

Usselo ['ʏsəloː] is a Dutch village in the municipality of Enschede in the eastern Netherlands region of Twente. It is located just west of Enschede and east of Boekelo. It has existed for over 800 years. Archaeology shows that the region was inhabited more or less continuously since the last ice-age. The region is very fertile and will support agriculture and cattle. The countryside is marked by artificial hills, called es or esch, which were formed by depositing dung mixed with dirt. A prime example is the Fleringer Esch, near Fleringen.

Michael G. L. Baillie is Professor Emeritus of Palaeoecology at Queen's University of Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Baillie is a leading expert in dendrochronology, or dating by means of tree-rings. In the 1980s, he was instrumental in building a year-by-year chronology of tree-ring growth reaching 7,400 years into the past.

The Shiva hypothesis, also known as coherent catastrophism, is the idea that global natural catastrophes on Earth, such as extinction events, happen at regular intervals because of the periodic motion of the Sun in relation to the Milky Way galaxy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Boslough</span> Physicist with expertise in planetary impacts and global catastrophes

Mark Boslough is an American physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, research professor at University of New Mexico, fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and chair of the Asteroid Day Expert Panel. He is an expert in the study of planetary impacts and global catastrophes. Due to his work in this field, Asteroid 73520 Boslough was named in his honor.


The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) or Clovis comet hypothesis is a speculative attempt to explain the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) cooling at the end of the Last Glacial Period, around 12,900 years ago. The hypothesis is controversial and not widely accepted by relevant experts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. Leroy Ellenberger</span>

Charles Leroy Ellenberger is perhaps best known as a one-time advocate, but now a critic of, controversial writer Immanuel Velikovsky and his works on catastrophism. He first read Worlds in Collision in 1969. In 1979, he became a contributing editor to the Velikovsky-inspired Kronos journal, and has contributed material to many other publications. In 1980 he was selected by the editor of Astronomy magazine to debate James Oberg on Velikovsky.

Stace Victor Murray Clube is an English astrophysicist.

Andrew Michael Tangye Moore, also known as A. M. T. Moore, is a British archaeologist and academic. He is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

Steven M. Stanley is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is best known for his empirical research documenting the evolutionary process of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record.

Adrian Lewis Melott is an American physicist. He is one of the pioneers of using large-scale computing to investigate the formation of large-scale structure in a Universe dominated by dark matter. He later turned his attention to an area he calls “astrobiophysics”, examining a variety of ways that external events in our galaxy may have influenced the course of life on Earth, including analysis of gamma-ray burst events.

The Corossol structure, which is also known as the Corossol crater, is a circular, 4.3-by-3.9-kilometre in diameter, underwater bedrock feature that is exposed on the gulf floor of the northwestern Gulf of Saint Lawrence 20-kilometre (12 mi) offshore of the city of Sept-Îles, Quebec, in eastern Canada. It is hypothesized to be a possible pre-Pleistocene, extraterrestrial impact structure. It lies underwater at a depth of 40–208-metre (131–682 ft). This underwater feature was found during the study of high-resolution bathymetric and sub-bottom profiler data collected south of the city of Sept-Iles in the northwestern Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James L. Powell</span> American geologist and writer (born 1936)

James Lawrence Powell is an American geologist, writer, former college president and museum director. He chaired the geology department at Oberlin College later serving as its provost and president. Powell also served as president of Franklin & Marshall College as well as Reed College. Following his positions in higher education, Powell presided over the Franklin Institute and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pilauco Bajo</span> Archaeological site in Chile

Pilauco is a paleontological and archaeological site located in the city of Osorno in Southern Chile. The site contains both human made lithic artifacts and megafauna remains–including gomphotheres. All the horizons containing megafauna and evidence of human activity date to the late Pleistocene. The calibrated radiocarbon dates indicate there was human activity in the site between 16,400 and -12,800 cal years B.P.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanpopo mission</span> 2015–18 ISS astrobiology experiment

The Tanpopo mission is an orbital astrobiology experiment investigating the potential interplanetary transfer of life, organic compounds, and possible terrestrial particles in the low Earth orbit. The purpose is to assess the panspermia hypothesis and the possibility of natural interplanetary transport of microbial life as well as prebiotic organic compounds.

<i>Magicians of the Gods</i> Book by Graham Hancock

Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilisation is a 2015 book by British pseudoarchaeology writer Graham Hancock, published by Thomas Dunne Books in the United States and by Coronet in the United Kingdom. Macmillan Publishers released an "updated and expanded" paperback edition in 2017.

Although diamonds on Earth are rare, extraterrestrial diamonds are very common. Diamonds small enough that they contain only about 2000 carbon atoms are abundant in meteorites and some of them formed in stars before the Solar System existed. High pressure experiments suggest large amounts of diamonds are formed from methane on the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune, while some planets in other planetary systems may be almost pure diamond. Diamonds are also found in stars and may have been the first mineral ever to have formed.

References

  1. "Cardiff Center for Astrobiology, Staff". cardiffcentreforastrobiology.com. Cardiff Center for Astrobiology. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  2. "Professor William M. Napier". www.buckingham.ac.uk. University of Buckingham. Archived from the original on 5 November 2014. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  3. Asher, D. J., S. V. M. Clube, W. M. Napier and D. I. Steel (1994). Coherent Catastrophism. Vistas in Astronomy, 38 (1), 1-27; Abstract at Harvard.edu
  4. "Was a giant comet responsible for a North American catastrophe in 11,000 BC?". Science Daily. 1 April 2010. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  5. Holliday, Vance T.; Daulton, Tyrone L.; Bartlein, Patrick J.; Boslough, Mark B.; Breslawski, Ryan P.; Fisher, Abigail E.; Jorgeson, Ian A.; Scott, Andrew C.; Koeberl, Christian; Marlon, Jennifer; Severinghaus, Jeffrey; Petaev, Michail I.; Claeys, Philippe (26 July 2023). "Comprehensive refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH)". Earth-Science Reviews: 104502. doi: 10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104502 . S2CID   260218223.
  6. "Scientists & Members". Comet Research Group. 10 September 2016. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  7. Boslough, Mark (2022). "Sodom Meteor Strike Claims Should Be Taken with a Pillar of Salt" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. 46 (1): 10–14.
  8. Nuttall, Nick (24 May 1990). "A cosmic trail with destruction in its wake". Times of London. Retrieved 5 November 2014.