3 ms·

I don’t really follow astrophysics, but there were hypotheses that the motion of the solar system through the galactic plane, which has a periodicity, would ind

I don’t really follow astrophysics, but there were hypotheses that the motion of the solar system through the galactic plane, which has a periodicity, would induce impact events. A cursory search suggests that recent analyses of crater data may not support those hypotheses. Here’s a link to a 2011 paper suggesting as much. So the notion was certainly a reasonable one even if not ultimately true. https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/416/2/1163/1058876 https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/416/2/1163/1058876

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Sounds a little like Nemesis [1]. The Wikipedia article mentions 26 million year intervals. So we're probably good for another 10 million? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(hypothetical_star) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(hypothetical_star)
guerrilla 4y ago
It's way beyond a three body problem though, so it's chaotic even if it's recurrent... even trying to retrodict precise correlations in celestial events 10k years ago is difficult, doing this would be way harder. The only thing I can think of on that scale that's somewhat predictable within meaningful margins is Milankovich cycles. Cool paper though. Thanks for sharing. (And to note: I can't edit my reply now but I read 'there' as 'these'. Obviously there are other (somewhat) cyclic natural catastrophes especially on shorter timescales.)