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New Theory Links Biodiversity to the Stars
eldavojohn writes "Space.com's Mystery Monday has an article proposing a hypothesis that our solar system's undulations directly affects biodiversity on earth through cosmic-ray exposure. There's data that, through the fossil record, shows us earth's biodiversity peaking again and again until a great cataclysmic period where it is greatly reduced. The theory essentially suggests that this 62 million year cycle can be attributed to how our solar system moves within the milky way galaxy which turns out to be a 64 million year cycle. It's a plausible explanation though very tough to prove, hopefully we don't have to wait around 64 million years to draw a conclusion on this hypothesis."
Am I the only one who refreshed the chart after a few minutes to see if it updated?
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How far into the cycle are we now?
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) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
I'll wait.
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There's data that, through the fossil record, shows us earth's biodiversity peaking again and again until a great cataclysmic period where it is greatly reduced [...] hopefully we don't have to wait around 64 million years to draw a conclusion on this hypothesis.
Personally, I hope we do have to wait that long. :-)
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I used to think God was responsible for sheep love because he made them so soft and cuddly. Now I know it's the stars it seems much more like it's cosmic destiny to create human/sheep hybrids.
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This general idea has been around for a very long time, I've come across it several times in various magazines like Scientific American, etc.
Apparently the second derivative of biodiversity (wrt. to time) had a minima 3 years ago. Co-incidently bush got re-elected.
Astrologists are freaking out across the world at the first sign of honest scientific news that shows a link between stars and life on earth, telling everyone that they knew all along the stars are what makes everything the way it is.
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I don't plan on being here in 64 million years, do you?
Yes. Can I have your stereo?
I agree... I also do not plan to be around for the Y10K bug, which will come up before this.
1011 1010 1101 1100 0000 1111 1111 1110 1110
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Buy hybrid cars. Start conserving toilet paper. Wait, that's for global warming!
Can we launch a few nukes at a nearby Asteroid? Oh, that's for stopping the apocolyptic end-of-the-world asteroid collision.
What can *I do* to help stop this 64 million year cycle? There must be something I should worry about here. I'll buy some solar panels. Doh! That's for global warming again...
The median of the cycle is exactly ....
31.4159265 Million years, anything else is not Geeky enough.
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As for me, I'm not going to worry about it too much. Think of me as Beowulf Schaeffer not worrying too much about the galactic core exploding, and the shock wave arriving in a mere 20,000 years into the future. Nothing to lose sleep over.
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When I saw "link[ed] to the stars" and "millions of years ago" I was hoping scientists confirmed that HP Lovecraft was right..
How dare you, sir! It's clearly mankind that is causing global warming, and the only way to get rid of it is if people pay higher taxes to make up for their pure evil. It's not liberalism--it's a "consensus!" Al Gore knows all.
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One interesting hypothesis is is that a red or brown dwarf in a highly elliptical orbit with our sun periodically (every ~26M years) passes through the Oort Cloud and pulls comets into the inner solar system, causing a wave of extinctions.
BTW, one of the physcists researching this idea, Richard A. Muller teaches a great physics course, titled "Physics for Future Presidents" which is available online for free on google video.
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I would prefer to wait as long as possible before having to verify this first-hand.
I volunteer to conduct the research. I'll just need a small yearly grant for 64 million years.
This is not meant to be a funny post.
Here's an article on extinctions in Wikipedia.
Here's a snipet from that article about mass extinctions:
There have been at least five mass extinctions in the history of life, and four in the last 3.5 billion years in which many species have disappeared in a relatively short period of geological time. The most recent of these, the K-T extinction 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, is best known for having wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, among many other species.
In other words, don't laugh about the 62-64 million year cycle. We are due for a mass extinction, according to the fossil record. Maybe this phenomenon has something to do with it. Note that when biodiversity goes down in a species, that's not good, biologically speaking. Less diversity means less chance of a species being able to survive a catastrophic event.
Take it for what you want, but all those people laughing about having to wait 64 million years, my point is, I don't necessarily think you have to wait all that long.
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I really doubt this hypothesis because it assumes that organisms are helpless in the face of change levels of cosmic radiation. The reality is that DNA repair mechanisms are subject to evolution (and can evolve relatively quickly in lab experiments). If background radiation rose, organisms would simply evolve more robust DNA repair mechanisms. If cosmic radiation dropped off, then organisms would simply evolve less robust DNA repair mechanisms.
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I would really like to see a larger chart than the one they give. Cycles which are 64 and 62 years long respectively will begin to shift out of phase with each other eventually, and after (I think) 32 cycles they will be 180 degrees out of phase. If the biodiversity cycles still are still the same when the two are out of phase, it would discredit the theory. Of course, this means you have to go back almost two billion years, when the only life was a kind of blue-green sludge (at best).
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According to a different article on the same study, the dinosaur mass extinction at the K-T boundary doesn't fit the pattern.
We've still got at least 10 million years before we enter the next cosmic ray cycle.
It's hard to read off the chart, and I didn't see mention in the article, but this submission immediately brought a few things to mind:
About 55 million years ago the earth apparently underwent a significant warming event called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum that resulted in the extinction of 30-40% of deep sea life, and may have been equally instrumental in the emergence of mammals as the asteroid 10 million years before that killed off the dinosaurs.
The trigger is unknown, but it is believed that warming oceans due to a natural cycle caused the sublimation of large quantities of methanes from clathrate deposits on the sea-floor. Methane, of course, is a potent greenhouse gas. The result was average ocean surface temperatures as much as 10 deg C warmer than before. The cause of the natural cycle is unknown. However, I just did some digging around, and it appears the major long term thermal cycles (based mostly on O-18/O-16 ratios in sediments, is my understanding) run 140 million years on average, but higher frequency signals definitely exist.
Now, there has been some recent research finding that cosmic ray activity may be an influencing factor on global warming (Note: No need to revive the global warming debate...I'm just sharing my thoughts, and am not claiming anything). Basically cosmic rays appear to affect the formation of clouds in the upper atmosphere, which in turn effects solar insolation.
It would be very interesting if this 62 million year cycle happened to coincide with the PETM extinction 55 million years ago. My thought being perhaps a cosmic ray cycle caused a typical warming cycle that happened to induce the "big burp" of methane-clathrates, which significantly magnified the warming effect.
Actually, with some further poking around, I see this basic theory has been proposed for explaining the 140 MY cycle, minus the methane-clathrate bonus.