Doomsday Just Ahead - Tapa dura

Drawing on evidence from several disciplines, and examples from five continents, Ian Niall Rankin sets out to completely reshape the history of our planet. Darwin's theory of evolution, he says, is inadequate to explain the archaeological and other evidence of past catastrophes that have hit the Earth. In his radical argument he insists that the reason for these repeated catastrophes lies in the unstable nature of the solar system itself. Tilting at another even more established theory, the author finds Newton's theory of gravity inadequate to explaining the continuous momentum of the planets over so many aeons. The model he proposes under his New Theory is as elegant as it is unexpected. This book will divide the scientific world as much as it will excite anyone with an open-minded interest in the nature of the universe.

Ian Niall Rankin's varied life has seen him follow several careers. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he went first into advertising, before leaving in the early 1960s to set up his own business manufacturing seat belts. In the early 1970s he entered the world of financial investment, becoming joint chairman of an employment agency in Holland, and at the end of that decade he started an oil exploration company, which has taken him all over the world. Nowadays, Sir Ian Rankin spends much of his time at his house near Toulouse in southern France. Doomsday Just Ahead is his first book.