Solar System's Path May Have Spurred Ice Ages

ImproperShutdown writes "Space.com reports that a physicist has found a correlation between the amount of cosmic rays reaching the Earth, as it passes through the spiral arms of the Milky Way, and the planet's ice ages over the last billion years. Apparently, as the Solar System passes through the higher density spiral arm regions, it receives more cosmic rays from the higher density of supernovae that have occurred in the region. This larger flux of cosmic rays ionizes the Earth's atmosphere more, which makes it more cloudy and cools down the Earth."

Comments

This is not his first bad theory.

[Peter T Ermit]

Here at the APS site, there's an abstract. It looks like a bad paper -- one of a zillion theories that make mountains out of correlations. It's not even this author's first proposal of this sort. Five years ago, he suggested that the cosmic rays caused extinction events.

Sounds like this guy has a favorite hammer, and he's now convinced that everything looks like a nail.