23 March 2016
Could an encounter with a passing dark molecular cloud be responsible for killing off the dinosaurs?
... ~80% the size of the Chicxulub crater (~150 km diameter), has no discernible evidence linking it with a Late Devonian (364 Ma) mass extinction event. Nimura and colleagues also point out that an encounter with a dark cloud perturbs the orbit...
23 August 2021
Earth's magnetic field weakens every 200 million years, new study says
... reversals, she adds. As the dates of low magnetic field strength also coincide with the Devonian-Carboniferous mass extinction event, it adds weight to the theory that strong UV radiation exposure over long periods was the cause...
January 2016
Is Jupiter Really Our Protective Shield?
... [9], more recent analysis points to a cometary impactor as the ‘smoking gun’ that triggered this mass extinction. [10] In each mass extinction, while some opportunistic species thrived on the carnage, Earth’s biosphere took time to recover its pre...
February 2016
Defending Earth against cosmic hazards
...ensuing cloud of dust, was termed a ‘nuclear winter’. This mass extinction event (known as the K-T) not only killed off the ... time. This was the worst of the Earth’s five mass extinctions and the ultimate verification that it was the result of ...
08 March 2021
New study determines best place and time to live in the Milky Way
...000 light years (2 to 8 kiloparsecs) from the galactic center – were subject to many explosive events able to trigger a mass extinction. For reference, the Sun is approximately 26,670 ± 110 light years (8.2 kiloparsecs) from the galactic centre. This...
January 2019
Saving humanity – is space up to the job?
... bio-scientists for many years. The widely-supported Alvarez hypothesis posits that the so-called K-T mass extinction event that occurred approximately 66 million years ago, resulting in incredible devastation and eliminating up to 80 percent of all...
