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Linking Mass Extinctions To the Sun's Journey In the Milky Way
schwit1 writes "In a paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint service, astronomers propose that as many as eleven past extinction events can be linked to the Sun's passage through the spiral arms of the Milky Way. (You can download the paper here [pdf].) From the paper: 'A correlation was found between the times at which the Sun crosses the spiral arms and six known mass extinction events. Furthermore, we identify five additional historical mass extinction events that might be explained by the motion of the Sun around our Galaxy. These five additional significant drops in marine genera that we find include significant reductions in diversity at 415, 322, 300, 145 and 33 Myr ago. Our simulations indicate that the Sun has spent ~60% of its time passing through our Galaxy's various spiral arms.'"
**might** be explained
Isn't that pretty much what "correlation" means?
I know that's supposed to be tongue in cheek, but correlation is just another way of saying, we need to look into this with more detail. So if that's your hypothesis and there's correlation between the events, then who am I to judge if you decided to study it with greater detail.
So why are you calling it "rubbish?" They've found a correlation. That's interesting. No-one's claiming to have discovered the mechanism. Correlation is not causation. You seem to have inferred that because someone's found a correlation, they must also be claiming causation.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
in other news...many people die in hospitals, therefore hospitals may cause death.
And indeed they do.
http://www.health-care-reform.net/causedeath.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital-acquired_infection
So don't be so quick to dismiss the possibility of causation, simply because it was discovered by correlation.
Falsely assuming no-causation is every bit as much as a statistics induced error as falsely assuming causation.
With correlation you have a reason to look for causation. Without correlation, looking for causation is just shooting in the dark.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
We use the most up to date Milky Way model and solar orbit data
in order to test the hypothesis that the Sun's galactic spiral arm crossings cause
mass extinction events on Earth.
That is how the authors of this paper reported their findings in the actual article's abstract. As for how some random Slashdot poster reported this idea, does it really matter? If you are complaining about Slashdot itself and lame editorship on the part of those who review these stories on the Slashdot staff, that is something else entirely and not something to complain about to the paper's authors.
Besides, they claim it is a causation, or that events which somehow happen during those crossings in turn trigger these extinction events. Unfortunately we have a data sample of one solar system to compare against right now to see if there might be any substance to the mechanism.
That doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. "Correlation is not causation" is a statement reminding people that "B causes A" and "X causes A and B" are alternative explanations to "A causes B" when one observes a correlation.
In this case, the only reasonable choice is "galactic orbit causes extinctions" or "the correlation is accidental"; none of the other alternatives are reasonable.
Areas of star formation are more radioactive due to massive blue stars and resulting supernovas when the massive star dies. More star formation happens in the arms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
A technological regress requires a fragile society not just a sudden jolt.
But we are a fragile society. Without even having to bring up the Idiocracy, the fact remains that we're mostly a society of specialists, dependent on the other cogs in the machine for our survival, stupidly mocking the "preppers" who are really just trying to be generalists. A comet strike could easily disrupt this machine and cause it to grind to a halt.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters