Department
of Physics at the University
of California at Berkeley, and Faculty Senior Scientist
at the
Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory,
where I am also associated with the Institute
for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics. Don't
confuse me with Richard
S. Muller.
Muller's vita is available in html or pdf
You can also jump to current research.
Cycles
in Fossil Diversity. Our discovery of the 62 Myr cycle
was published in 2005, but now we present the data parsed in
171
different
ways! See below.
Are
you a LOST fan? If so, you might be interested in my
explanation of how Ben moved the island, published in Popular
Mechanics online.
My
course, Physics for future Presidents, has just been given the highest award
it could possibly earn: in a poll taken by the student newspaper,
The Daily Californian, it was named Best
Class at Berkeley!
Popular Version |
There are two books I have written
titled Physics
for Future Presidents. The one written for
popular readers -- meant to be read rather than studied,
is shown
on the left. I've been on NPR twice answering call-ins: listen
to Michael
Krasny on Forum or Tom
Ashbrook's "On
Point".
The original
book, a textbook for my course,
is on the right side. The popular version has five sections:
terrorism, energy, nukes, space, and global warming. The
new Fall 2008 edition of the text (available in August) will
have
13 chapters including a new one on climate change, multiple
choice and essay questions, and
is suitable
for a
course, Due to a publisher's glitch, the textbook isn't
yet availble, but will be by about Aug 20. If you try to
order it online, you'll get an error. That should be fixed
soon.
|
Class Textbook |
Muller
teaches physics to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain,
and other candidates (photo taken by Joey
Manfre).
Science
Magazine piece about UC Berkeley's success in
broadcasting my lectures on YouTube.
A soldier in Iraq listened to my physics lectures
while manning a .50-caliber machine-gun and watching over a
goat herder's
field
where insurgents were suspected of passing through a week earlier.
Read the whole
story.
Burning Man 2007. See my
movies and photos. Most impressive is the Movie
of the Burning Man. taken September 2, 2007. My favorite
art was the
Big Round Cubatron.
See my movie of it, and also artist Mark Lottor's website. Night
Panorama of Black Rock City gives
a sense of the place. Also the Fire
Wheel Movie. Burning
Man Photos give the overall picture, including a photo
of me in full Tuareg dress, standing by the Temple.
(The Tuareg figured
out
years
ago
how to
protect
themselves from sandstorms, and the protection really does
work. I added the face mask.)
Watch the TV clip about my class
Physics for future Presidents that
was
on
ABC7
News
on
May 21,
2007.
Go to: Top
Universities Offer Free Lectures Online.
Muller's
Theorems. The complete list is
now posted.
Photos from our August
2007 backpack trip
to Hoover Wilderness and the Virginia Canyon in Yosemite.
Historic
FSM photos inside Sproul Hall,
Dec 3-4, 1964. For
the first time, I have posted the photographs I took during
the Free
Speech Movement Sproul Hall sit in.
These include images of Mario Savio, Jack Weinberg, and Joan
Baez in the corridors of Sproul. They also show the police
charging up the stairs to take control of the window on the
second floor, a window that was being used to take food and
information in from outside sympathizers. I was arrested,
and spent the next night in the Oakland jail. When
I was released, to my amazement, the police returned the
film to me. I was the only student arrested who later became
a professor at Cal.
Nobel
Prize. Congratulations to
John Mather and George
Smoot for the Nobel Prize in
Physics, awarded for their work on COBE. I've posted a new pre-COBE
history page that includes historically interesting
documents that are relevant to the genesis of COBE. These date
from the
days when I was the Principal Investigator on the U-2 project
that discovered the cosine anisotropy of the cosmic microwave
background radiation.
Physics
for future Presidents, my
course (see below) has
a textbook,
available from Thomson
Publishing. It is also available on Amazon,
for a higher price, but you might need to make sure you get the
right edition. The newer version says "Spring 2008 edition" on
the cover.
Wildlife
photos from
our recent trip to Kenya and Rwanda.
And photos
from Carlsbad Caverns, Cuba, Iguacu, the
Sierra Nevada, Morocco, Paraguay, Peru, more....
See my little silly essay Dumbledore
isn't gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that....
Current
Research
Cycles
in Fossil Diversity (paper from Nature). See
also diversity
data parsed in 171 different ways (pdf file). In the
10 March 2005 issue of Nature, graduate
student Robert Rohde and I report the discovery of a strong
62 Myr cycle in fossil diversity. (Click
for pdf copy.) The cycle is huge, and it does not have
a ready explanation. I show below a plot from our paper
that shows the number of shorter-duration genera back to
545 Million years ago. (Incidentally, I was misquoted in
a newspaper account. No, I have not abandoned the Nemesis
idea.) PBS broadcast an interview with me on the subject,
but the link is broken; if anybody finds it, please let
me know and I'll post the link here. The old (now dead)
link was
http://131.243.129.75:554/ramgen/Teid/TABL/Mar-18-2005-CBC-Muller.rm
Click the following link to download
a pdf file that shows the diversity
data parsed in 171 different ways. If you are familiar with
paleontology, then these data may give you the clue that you
need to figure out what is causing the cycle.
Avalanches
at the Core-Mantle Boundary, has been published in Geophysical
Research Letters, vol.29, pg 41-1 to 41-4 (12 Oct 2002). Such avalanches
may affect geomagnetic reversals and flood basalts. They can be
spontaneous, or triggered by oblique impacts of comets and asteroids.
Impacts
on the moon (and the earth) increased
about 400 Myr ago, a result that we published in
SCIENCE in May, 2000. A follow-up
investigation on impacts
at the Apollo 12 site published in the
Journal of Geophysical Research showed a weaker effect than we
first reported.
This increase, if real, may
have
implications both for evolution and our model of
the
solar system. There is an interesting interpretation of these data
in terms of the Nemesis idea: see my paper "Measurements
of lunar impacts ... and implications for the Nemesis theory." For
more on the Nemesis idea, see the next entry:
Nemesis.
This is a theory worked out with Marc Davis and Piet Hut. It predicts
the future discovery of a small (probably red dwarf) star orbiting
the Sun at a distance of a few light years. The theory has
been considered controversial and speculative, but it has not
yet been ruled out. We should know for sure in the next few
years. I wrote an article about our work for the New York Times
Magazine in 1985; here is a transcript: NYTimes
Article. See
the Nemesis
web page. See also "Measurements
of lunar impacts ... and implications for the Nemesis theory."
We have measured
the accretion of extraterrestrial
dust by using iridium measurements on Greenland
ice. The results are controversial: we found a lower level
of accretion
than had generally been believed. Read our article.pdf
published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
A
New Theory of Glacial cycles. Also see
the article Glacial
Cycles and Astronomical Forcing, published in Science
vol 277, pp 215-218 (11 July 1997). Also look at our book:
See
the new compilation of ice age data we call the Benthic
Stack, published in Paleoceanography (vol 17,
2002). It was tuned to obliquity alone, and represents a new
view of climate for the last 860 kyr.
Teaching:
Physics for future Presidents
My
MIT Technology Review Essays
For three
years I wrote a monthly column in MIT's Technology
Review online. It is based on my class, see above.
The essays, in reverse chronological order, are:
The
Physics of Gluttony (Nov '04). You lose weight (carbon) only by breathing.
Global
Warming Bombshell (Oct '04). Global warming poster child
discredited.
Death
of the Dinosaurs (Aug '04). There's a lot more we don't know now.
Military
Lessons from Iraq War II (July '04). Some may surprise you.
Dirty
Bombs (June '04). My greatest fear is fear itself.
Less
Lethal Weapons (May '04). Are they good or bad?
Alaska
is melting. Can Kyoto save it? (April '04). Climate is local too.
The
Witch of Yucca Mountain (March '04). Research won't reassure.
Our
Non-expedition to Mars (Feb '04). Mars in 26 years? Only after robots.
The
Voice of Osama (Jan '04). Why I think it isn't his.
Medieval
Global Warming (Dec '03). Medieval climate becomes politicized.
The
Physics Diet (Nov '03). Exercise doesn't work. Eating less does.
Bizarre
Math of Elections (Oct '03). Low voter turnout may be a healthy sign.
Cuba
Low-Tech (Sept '03). Observations from my visit to Cuba.
When
Lie Detectors Lie - or Don't (August '03) They do have valid uses.
Hydrogen
Economy Pollution (July '03) Not as clean as you might think.
Deceiving
Saddam (June '03) To fool someone, you may have to fool all.
The
Weapons Paradox (May '03). Are kinder, gentler weapons, always evil?
Shock
and Awe in Babylon (April '03) Early surprises in Gulf War II.
Baghdad
Express (March '03) A weapon of mass transport?
Space
Shuttle Science (Feb '03) Is it safe? Is it science?
Iraq
inspections -- just as expected. (Jan '03) They won't find WMD
North
Korea -- the next Iraq? (Dec '02) Yes and no
War
with Iraq -- As Predictable as Chess (Nov '02) You'll be surprised
The
Lowest-Tech Atom Bomb (Oct '02) Saddam's easiest approach
Did
Everything Change? (Sept '02) Why Al Qaeda failed
Airport
Insecurity. (Aug '02) The real threat is
checked luggage
Who's
afraid of 1984? (July '02) Orwell got it backwards
The
Conservation Bomb. (June '02) Can counter the population
bomb
Weapons
of Precise Destruction. (May '02) Predator assassination
Al
Qaeda's Anthrax (April '02) See agreement from David
Tell
Crop
duster terrorism (March
'02) Weapons from the corner station
Springtime,
Taxes, and the Attack on Iraq (Feb '02) War is inevitable
I've been analyzing the terrorist threat ever since 9-11-01. Read my early
articles and judge for yourself how accurate I was (or wasn't):
Analysis
of the Terrorist Attack, posted Sept 16 2001, 5 days after 9-11.
The
War on Terrorism posted Sept 21, 2001, with my predictions.
The
terrorist threat is over, for now posted Oct 26, 2001.
I have put online my viewgraphs for my talk,
Physics
of Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Conflict with Iraq.
(photo
by Peg Skorpinski)
