The Death of Nemesis: The Sun's Distant, Dark Companion

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Over the last 500 million years or so, life on Earth has been threatened on many occasions; the fossil record is littered with extinction events. What's curious about these events is that they seem to occur with alarming regularity.

The periodicity is a matter of some controversy among paleobiologists but there is a growing consensus that something of enormous destructive power happens every 26 or 27 million years. The question is what?

In this blog, we've looked at various ideas such as the Sun's passage through the various spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy (it turns out that this can't explain the extinctions because the motion doesn't have had the right periodicity).

But another idea first put forward in the 1980s is that the Sun has a distant dark companion called Nemesis that sweeps through the Oort cloud every 27 million years or so, sending a deadly shower of comets our way. It's this icy shower of death that causes the extinctions, or so the thinking goes.

Well, with Nemesis ruled out I wonder what could be causing these extinction's.

I heard from a cosmetologist that he thinks it is from the orbit of the sun. He thought as we raise and lower through the galactic plane we could be entering pockets of dark matter or interstellar dust and that is what could be causing the extinction's. If dense enough it could cause a dimming of the sun so it would definitly be a possibility.

Thought I would share this as this is kind of proof that the idea of another star effecting us is false, and that is kind of a big deal.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Mod Edit: External Source Tags – Please Review This Link.

Maybe I should have posted this in the 2012 forum, as it would have received some attention.

Some times no replies mean something as well.



Pred...

reply to post by predator0187


I have read about this cycle too, most certainly seems like it would be celestial in cause.
isnt there also supposed to be a 63 million year cycle?

www.sfgate.com.../c/a/2005/03/10/MNGFIBN6PO1.DTL&type=printable
"Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover"

reply to post by VonDoomen


Yea, I heard 62ish too, but apparently 27 is more likely, in the data anyway.

Weird that this happens I wonder how many people are working on this, because how many ever are, we need more.

Thanks for the reply.

Pred...

reply to post by predator0187


With a scale so huge, one would have to think it is galactic in cause.

Here is what I believe it happening. There could be pockets and bands of high energy radiation, or dark matter, that maybe do not rotate exactly with the physical matter of the galaxy. We could be going through these clouds of highly charged plasmids, which would compress/strain our magnetosphere, allowing more radiation to reach the planets surface. Lots of death and lots of mutation.

another possibility, which is believe is less likely, due to the cyclical nature of this, and the time scale.

But our galaxy and our next door galaxy are actually colliding as we speak. andromeda or saggitarius maybe? I forget off the top of my head! this could also present us with some challenging obstacles.