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The Nastiest Feud in Science

A catastrophic asteroid impact is the widely accepted scientific explanation for the dinosaurs' extinction, but this isn't the only idea under consideration. In "The Nastiest Feud in Science," published in the September 2018 issue of The Atlantic, Bianca Bosker tells the story of Gerta Keller, Professor of Paleontology and Geology at Princeton University. For decades, Keller has argued that "the mass extinction was caused not by a wrong-place-wrong-time asteroid collision but by a series of colossal volcanic eruptions in a part of western India known as the Deccan Traps," an assertion that put Keller at the center of a long-running and frequently vicious scientific controversy. Bosker's long-form article unpacks this raucous controversy, highlighting the infighting among scientific disciplines, in particular between followers of Luis Alvarez, the physicist who first proposed the asteroid theory, and adherents to the Deccan volcano theory, such as Keller. A fascinating read, "The Nastiest Feud in Science" is accompanied by multiple images, along with a short video.
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Date of Scout Publication
August 31st, 2018
Date Of Record Creation
August 27th, 2018 at 2:01pm
Date Of Record Release
August 27th, 2018 at 4:12pm
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