Galactic wobble causes extinctions?

Here’s a fascinating new hypothesis: the reasons there are big die-offs every 62M years is because the solar system wobbles too far up in the orbital plane of the galaxy, exposing Earth to nasty radiation. Biodiversity drops by 10% like clockwork, and has for the last half-billion years. A cluster of galaxies nearby emit muons, damaging DNA. I can understand why it would have taken a bit to put the pieces of this puzzle together — how often do astronomers and biologists get together? As geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously said, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

4 replies on “Galactic wobble causes extinctions?”

  1. Well, it’s not exactly “like clockwork” and there are extinction events off pattern as well: enough to make this still be a pretty open question.

  2. …the radiation consists of particles called muons, which are so powerful they can penetrate about 2.5 kilometers of sea water or 900 meters of rock

    Good gravy! That’s more than enough to penetrate the hide-bound tomes and tin-foil hats over at the Federalist Society. I’m not sure they can sustain much more mutation.

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