Bill Napier 7 years ago

Bill Napier, in an email to the Benny Peiser Cambridge Conference Network in 2005 (in reply to criticism of the Clube and Napier model) said, 'so far as I know nobody of status disputes that there was an erstwhile exceptionally large comet in a short period earth crossing orbit in the relatively recent past. In fact, I don't know how it could be disputed since we see the debris in the form of the old massive Taurid meteor stream. The hypothesis is not original to Clube and Napier – the erstwhile existence of such a body has been pointed out in the past by Fred Whipple, Lubos Kresak, Zdenek Sekanina and other comet astronomers. The excellent numerical work of David Asher and Duncan Steel, showing that there was a major episode of creation of Taurid meteors in the Holocene has likewise, as far as I know, not being disputed. Again, how could it be? – it's a piece of straightforward celestial mechanics' and later, 'I think the field is not so much disputed by astronomers as avoided …'