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Research by New York University Biology Professor Michael Rampino ( http://www.biology.as.nyu.edu/object/MichaelRampino.html ) concludes that Earth's infrequent but predictable path around and through our Galaxy's disc may have a direct and significant effect on geological and biological phenomena occurring on Earth. In a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, he concludes that movement through dark matter may perturb the orbits of comets and lead to additional heating in the Earth's core, both of which could be connected with mass extinction events.
The Galactic disc is the region of the Milky Way Galaxy where our solar system resides. It is crowded with stars and clouds of gas and dust, and also a concentration of elusive dark matter--small subatomic particles that can be detected only by their gravitational effects.
Previous studies have shown that Earth rotates around the disc-shaped Galaxy once every 250 million years. But the Earth's path around the Galaxy is wavy, with the Sun and planets weaving through the crowded disc approximately every 30 million years. Analyzing the pattern of the Earth's passes through the Galactic disc, Rampino notes that these disc passages seem to correlate with times of comet impacts and mass extinctions of life. The famous comet strike 66 million ago that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs is just one example.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/nyu-ddm021815.php
[Also Covered By]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/dinosaurs/11422695/Dark-matter-may-have-killed-the-dinosaurs-claims-scientist.html
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ryuugami on Friday February 20 2015, @09:17AM
But it certainly seems odd that just a couple weeks ago, some scientists were suggesting dark matter might not exist at all, while others are piling on the list of things to blame on dark matter.
Why would that seem odd? "Scientists" are not a hive mind, and the evidence for dark matter is not conclusive until we can actually observe it directly. That's prime material for all kinds of speculation and wild ideas. Hell, some of them might even be true. Almost every major scientific discovery was at first dismissed as impossible by most of the scientists, but with enough evidence, they were convinced.
Of course, this doesn't mean that we blindly accept any wild theory just because it's wild. OTOH, dismissing it because it "sounds stupid" or because "some other people assumed the opposite" is equally short-sighted.
Wait, let me try a car analogy.
But it certainly seems odd that just a couple weeks ago, some cars were turning left at this intersection, while others are turning right.
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20 2015, @09:28AM
> Almost every major scientific discovery was at first dismissed as impossible by most of the scientists, but with enough evidence, they were convinced.
No! This is just something put about by popular science.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20 2015, @03:36PM
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 20 2015, @09:19PM
But it certainly seems odd that just a couple weeks ago, some cars were turning left at this intersection, while others are turning right.
But if you made such an assertion about cars you could not see, measure, weigh, hear, passing through an intersection which was largely imaginary, and, if it existed at all was quadrillions of miles away, and if you made the assertion just so you could balance your equations about cat litter accumulation in the dryer filter, you would need to come up with something more convincing than a supposed extinction event that might have happened 300 million years ago.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.