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Is Earth Hurtling Toward a Galactic Minefield of Deadly Asteroids That Will Kill Us All??
The short answer is yes.
Scientists at Cardiff University and the University of Kansas have come up with competing theories about how the motion of our solar system within our galaxy will plunge us all into a fiery hellstorm of Cretaceous-style obliteration.
You see, the sun and its friends (that’s us!) are on an outer “spiral arm” that is circling the gravitational center of the Milky Way. Along the way…
Many of the ricocheted rocks collide with planets on their way through our system, including Earth. Impact craters recorded worldwide show correlations with the ~37 million year-cycle of these journeys through the galactic plane – including the vast impact craters thought to have put an end to the dinosaurs two cycles ago.
Almost exactly two cycles ago, in fact. The figures show that we’re very close to another danger zone, when the odds of asteroid impact on Earth go up by a factor of ten.
The Daily Galaxy also describes the Kansas theory, which has a slightly different epic, humanity-annihilating catastrophe in store for us:
As the Sun ventures out “above” the galactic plane, it becomes increasingly exposed to the cosmic ray generating shock front that the Milky Way creates as it ploughs through space. As we get closer to this point of maximum exposure, leaving the shielding of the thick galactic disk behind, the Kansas researchers hold that the increasing radiation destroys many higher species, forcing another evolutionary epoch. This theory also matches in time with the dinosaur extinction – and it’s nice to see theories for that from Kansas not based on “an angry bearded man in the sky did it”.
Oh, good one, Daily Galaxy writer. You think this is the time for jokes, as cosmic rays threaten to consume us all?? No wonder God is sitting in a rocker on His front porch, loading His shotgun with asteroid fields.
Source: The Daily Galaxy.
Because any time anything like this shows up people start getting apocalyptic, I’d like to quote the last line from the article:
“Either way, don’t go letting your VISA bill run up just yet. “Very close” in astronomical terms is very, very different to “close” in shaved-monkey time.”
Also, a paper was recently published that calls the asteroids-killing-dinosaurs theory into question, suggesting that perhaps volcanoes were more to blame (basically, the paper holds that the crater in the Yucatan area was formed a couple hundred thousand years too early to have killed off the dino’s).