Richard A. Muller
Richard A. Muller ( born January 6, 1944 in New York City ) is an American physicist (experimental particle physics, geophysics, astrophysics ), which is known through popular science books.
Life and work
Muller studied physics at Columbia University ( bachelor's degree ) and received his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. He initially worked with Luis Walter Alvarez, undertook particle physics experiments with bubble chambers, was the development of mass spectrometry with accelerators ( Accelerator Mass Spectroscopy, AMS) involved ( and used this for dating questions ) and measured early anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation (where he and George Smoot worked ). He is a professor at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
He is known for several popular science books and articles. For several years he was a columnist for the MIT Technology Review.
In particular, he dealt with issues of Geosciences, such as extinction cycles, ice ages, the interaction between Earth's core and mantle dynamics and mechanism of reversals of the geomagnetic field, impact craters and Red Sprites. 1988 Muller published the book Nemesis, in which he explains cycles of 26 million years in the extinction on Earth by impacts of comets, according to a periodic perturbation of the Oort cloud by a previously undetected binary companion of the Sun ( Nemesis ). He continued the search for this hypothetical dwarf star companion of the sun and later continued and built it with his group an automated telescope.
Muller was also involved in the automated supernova search by Saul Perlmutter and others that led to the discovery of accelerated expansion.
With Gordon MacDonald, he published a paper in Science, and a book in which he makes to the ecliptic periodic variations in the inclination of the Earth's orbit responsible for the ice ages ( with a period of 100,000 years ), in contrast to the theory of Milankovitch, these variations on back into the tilt of Earth's axis and other parameters. Immediate causes are by Muller and MacDonald then related variations in interstellar dust depending on the location of the Earth's orbit. These underpin the analysis of the content of oxygen isotopes in ocean sediments and iridium abundance in ocean sediments and ice cores from Greenland.
The impact of comets and asteroids leads to Muller and Morris also to reversals of the geomagnetic field according to the following reasoning: the introduced by the impact of dust particles lead to a lowering of the temperature of the Earth, glaciation of the polar ice caps lowers the sea level and leads to a reduction of the moment of inertia of the crust and mantle over the earth's core ( in the ppm range ), to which the coat faster than the core rotates what the Konvektionszyklen that produce the Earth's magnetic force.
Muller says also evidence to have found ( age dating argon isotopes of Mikrotektiten in lunar rocks samples) for an increase in the impact rate on the moon in the last 400 million years ( in case of prior drop in the last 3 billion years ago ).
Muller has turned into the controversy surrounding global warming. In 2004, he practiced in an article critical of the known as the " hockey stick graph " reconstruction of the mean temperature gradient in the northern hemisphere during the last 1,000 years. Later, Muller founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, whose aim is to deal transparently with criticism of the global temperature records in climate research. The results of the project in which, inter alia, Nobel Laureate in Physics Saul Perlmutter and also climatologist Judith A. Curry collaborate, disagree with the criticism of climate skeptics. After evaluation of 1.6 billion temperature records from the last two centuries, scientists at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project be stated, both in terms of the extent and the human cause of global warming, a strong agreement of their results with those of previous studies on this topic. Muller held it in consequence of the study results as a scientist for commanded to change his mind, and described himself as a " converted skeptic ."
He is a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group. Muller has his own consulting company in energy issues, Muller & Associates. In 1982 he was MacArthur Fellow and he was awarded the Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation. In 1999 he received for general audiences Physics for Future Presidents published as a book and authorized by the University as a freely accessible recordings on YouTube an award for teaching at the University of Berkeley and its popular at the university physics courses.
Writings
- Nemesis: The Death Star, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988, ISBN 0-7493-0465-0.
- Phil Dauber: The Three Big Bangs: Comet Crashes, Exploding Stars, and the Creation of the Universe, Addison -Wesley 1996, ISBN 0-201-15495-1.
- Gordon JF MacDonald with Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes: data, spectral analysis, and mechanisms, Springer Science Business Media, 2002, ISBN 3-540-43779-7.
- The Sins of Jesus, Aura Vision Publishing 1999, ISBN 0-9672765-1-9 ( historical novel ).
- Physics for Future Presidents, Custom Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1-4266-2459- X.
- The Instant Physicist: An Illustrated Guide, W. W. Norton, 2010.