How Nearby Supernovae Affected Life On Earth

sycodon writes with news of research into how nearby supernovae affected the development of life on Earth. "[Professor Henrik Svensmark] found that the changing frequency of nearby supernovae seems to have strongly shaped the conditions for life on Earth. Whenever the Sun and its planets have visited regions of enhanced star formation in the Milky Way Galaxy, where exploding stars are most common, life has prospered. Prof. Svensmark remarks in the paper, "The biosphere seems to contain a reflection of the sky, in that the evolution of life mirrors the evolution of the Galaxy.' ... The data also support the idea of a long-term link between cosmic rays and climate, with these climatic changes underlying the biological effects. And compared with the temperature variations seen on short timescales as a consequence of the Sun's influence on the influx of cosmic rays, the heating and cooling of the Earth due to cosmic rays varying with the prevailing supernova rate have been far larger.""

Comments

Re:Star Trek

[Samantha Wright]

That is indeed a pretty solid synopsis of "All Good Things". It should be emphasized though that the episode was completely paradoxical: the anomaly only started manifesting in the first place because the beam was fired to fix it. At the time it was hailed as a really strong Star Trek episode, but going back to it after watching seven seasons of the HMS Reset Button (Voyager), it's obvious that the writers were completely daft.