Are you afraid of the dark matter? European Southern Observatory, CC BY
In 1980, Walter Alvarez and his group at the University of California, Berkeley, discovered a thin layer of clay in the geologic record, which contained an unexpected amount of the rare element iridium.
They proposed that the iridium-rich layer was evidence of a massive comet hitting the Earth 66 million years ago, at the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs. The Alvarez group suggested that the global iridium-rich layer formed as fallout from an intense dust cloud caused by the impact. The cloud of dust covered the Earth, producing darkness and cold. In 1990, the large 100-mile diameter crater from the impact was found in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
Why do these extinctions and impacts appear to happen within an underlying cycle? The answer may lie in our position in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Recognition of this 30-million-year galactic cycle is the key to understanding why extinctions happen on a regular schedule. But it may also explain other geologic phenomena as well. In further studies, we found that a number of geological events, including pulses of volcanic eruptions, mountain building, magnetic field reversals, climate and major changes in sea level show a similar 30 million year cycle. Could this also be related to the way our solar system travels through the Galaxy?
A possible cause of the geological activity may be interactions of the Earth with dark matter in the Galaxy. Dark matter, which has never been seen, is most likely composed of tiny subatomic particles that reveal their presence solely by their gravitational pull.
As the Earth passes through the Galaxy’s disc, it will encounter dense clumps of dark matter. The dark matter particles can be captured by the Earth and can build up in the Earth’s core. If the dark matter density is great enough, the dark matter particles eventually annihilate one another, which adds a large amount of internal heat to the Earth that can drive global pulses of geologic activity.
Dark matter is concentrated in the narrow disc of the Galaxy, so geologic activity should show the same 30-million-year cycle. Thus, the evidence from the Earth’s geological history supports a picture in which astrophysical phenomena govern the Earth’s geological and biological evolution.
And if you’re wondering about your own prospects for encountering this dark matter-driven phenomenon? We’re just passing through the Galaxy’s dense disk within the last couple of million years, so a comet shower may be in the offing.
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Michael Rampino is a Professor of Biology at New York University. His research spans many areas of the earth sciences, especially the inter-relationships between the Earth’s changing environments and the evolution of life. A major long-term project involves the causes of mass extinctions, including the end-Cretaceous extinction 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs and many other forms of life died out. The evidence for a large asteroid or comet impact at that time led to work on a general theory of large-body impacts and mass extinctions, research into impact cratering and its environmental effects and into the possible astronomical causes for periodic comet showers in Earth’s history. This work has taken me to impact craters and geologic boundaries on six continents. Recently, he has been focusing on the causes of the Permian/Triassic mass extinction (250 million years ago) – the most severe mass extinction of life – with field studies in Europe, Japan and South Africa.
This article originally appeared here, republished under creative commons license.
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