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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Harvard physicists float new explanation for killer comets.

Comets may not be the product of the Sun exerting its influence over rocks in the Oort Cloud, but may instead be pushed Earth-wards by dark matter.

So say Lisa Randall and Matthew Reece from Harvard's Department of Physics, in a paper titled "Dark Matter as a Trigger for Periodic Comet Impacts". The pair write that "Large meteorite strikes on Earth cause big impact craters that are very likely responsible for some mass extinctions" and note that clusters of such collisions come along about every 35 million years. They therefore ponder where those space rocks come from. After dismissing the "Nemesis" theory (the Sun has a dark, invisible, companion) they wonder if the Solar System's path through the Galaxy sometimes intersects with denser-than-usual regions of space, which give Oort Cloud rocks a nudge towards the Sun. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/05/dark_matte r_killed_the_dinosaurs_boffins_suggest/ [theregister.co.uk]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.0576 [arxiv.org]

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