Linking Mass Extinctions To the Sun's Journey In the Milky Way 199
schwit1 writes "In a paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint service, astronomers propose that as many as eleven past extinction events can be linked to the Sun's passage through the spiral arms of the Milky Way. (You can download the paper here [pdf].) From the paper: 'A correlation was found between the times at which the Sun crosses the spiral arms and six known mass extinction events. Furthermore, we identify five additional historical mass extinction events that might be explained by the motion of the Sun around our Galaxy. These five additional significant drops in marine genera that we find include significant reductions in diversity at 415, 322, 300, 145 and 33 Myr ago. Our simulations indicate that the Sun has spent ~60% of its time passing through our Galaxy's various spiral arms.'"
Re:Rubish (Score:5, Funny)
It means every time a mass extinction occurs on Earth, a galactic spiral arm is contructed.
Re:Rubish (Score:1, Funny)
It's clearly global warming caused by man that has lead to these mass extinctions.
Re:Intergalactic space (Score:4, Funny)
The reapers hide in intergalactic space, so we're probably not safe there.
Re:Depends on what powers the sun (Score:3, Funny)
Is this some sort of inside joke? A reference to a Time Cube-style crackpot of whom I'm not aware?
Oh dear. I suspect you're serious.
Re:Intergalactic space (Score:2, Funny)
No, no, no. I'm just saying that there's no way to detect a black hole without any matter around for it to consume. We're much safer where we can see them!
Won't someone please think on the children?
Re:Rubish (Score:4, Funny)
You laugh, but in 50 years the atmosphere gets so hot that it excites the molecules to light speed, at which point it creates a rift in space time that tears back through time, sending hot jets of atmospheric gases ripping through the atmosphere and extinguishing life at periods in the past.
Also, the midwest will be completely covered in 200ft of popcorn.
Re:Explanation is elsewhere (Score:2, Funny)
Spiral galaxy arm transits.
Cosmic ray fluctuations.
Killer Asteroids.
Worst Haiku ever.