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Dark Visitor is a strange book, to say the least. The author pretends to be multiple authors (but is easy to see right through given the same writing style for the different voices). He pretends the CIA is after him. He sounds serious at times and like the book is just fiction or a game at others. If nothing else the reader will come away confused.
I believe his intention is to get kids interested in science, but there are far better books that can do that job (examples include: Blind Watchers of the Sky, Contact, The Demon-Haunted World, and others). The book is riddled with typos and grammatical errors. There is more than one of each on many pages. This makes reading difficult. At the end of the book the author claims to have intentionally left "Easter Eggs" in the work. This leaves you scratching your head and wondering
1) Is the book just a game of sorts?The structure is not well thought out. Items are repeated and others are presented in reverse order. For instance, he talks about what will happen when earth's orbit is further away from the sun. He also discusses what will happen when earth's orbit is closer to the sun. At first I thought he was just confused. Later in the book we find out that what he actually believes is that earth's orbit will become more elliptical with a closer orbit part of the year and a farther orbit for the other part of the year. He should have said so before discussing each individually.
2) Are the Easter Eggs the real cause of all the typos and grammatical errors? and
3) Who in their right mind would go back and reread this book to try and decipher them?!?!
The author claims that the facts in the book about an approaching "dark visitor" that will change the earth's orbit and radically affect life on earth in just a few years are true. Indeed, he reiterates this point over and over again. But why would someone with such knowledge self publish a book on the subject (and make it look like a rough draft with all the spelling and grammar problems) if this was the case? Why not use more orthodox channels of communication and get some other astronomers to verify their findings (first)?
In the end I remained unconvinced and unsatisfied with my reading of Dark Visitor. In fact, I probably wouldn't have even finished the book had it not been the only thing I had to read on a series of long airplane flights.
from the publisher:
Many bright students, especially girls, have little interest in science courses. "Science is for nerds and certainly won’t pay as well as Wall Street or legal firms" – is their view. Changing this attitude may be more important than better instruction in science classes. Some may consider this only a self-serving objective of science teachers, but everyone needs substantial understanding of the world they live in.
Dark Visitor claims to be a scientific prediction of a return in 2008 to ice-age climate, due to a slight orbit change that will be caused by a dark visitor, now coming from deep space. One chapter discusses several physically possible objects, including even an aggregate of magnetic monopoles, that could be the approaching dark visitor, but the highest probability is assigned to the second of a pair of still gravitationally-coupled, small, stellar-core, black holes that formed in the early universe when it was smaller and typical stars pairs were larger.
Dark Visitor is designed to appeal to young people, not currently interested in physics, who are making career choices.
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