Express reported that New York University professor and geologist Michael Rampino carried out research which suggests dark matter – the mysterious invisible stuff making up most of the mass in the universe – could come into contact with the earth more often than thought and could be responsible the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and even wipe out the human race.
There are currently five major extinctions recorded over the past 450 million years widely recognised by geologists.
Mr Rampino theorised that dark matter could come into contact with the earth as often as every 30million years or more, and then remain within the planet’s core being slowly released to the surface.
He said: “We are fortunate enough to live on a planet that is ideal for the development of complex life.
“But the history of the Earth is punctuated by large-scale extinction events, some of which we struggle to explain.
“It may be that dark matter – the nature of which is still unclear but which makes up around a quarter of the universe – holds the answer.
“As well as being important on the largest scales, dark matter may have a direct effect on life on Earth.”
No detectors on earth have directly found dark matter yet.
However, scientists know it’s there because it interacts gravitationally with visible matter and radiation.
Modern theories suggests dark matter makes up a substantial portion of the mass of our universe, and the inner part of our galaxy, where our solar system resides, is thought to contain it.
Mr Rampino reasoned that if, as some scientists believe, there is a thin disk of dark matter running horizontally through our Milky Way galaxy, then our solar system moving around the galactic center, may have occasionally bobbed up and down through it.
The sun is thought to orbit the centre of the Milky Way once about every 250million years – known as a cosmic year.
And as the Sun journeys through it and our solar system also move up and down through the crowded galactic disk, in a weaving motion that lasts about 30 million years.
Rampino noted that the pattern of the Earth’s motion through the galactic disk seems to correlate with mass extinctions.
His most recent study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, concluded this motion of the solar system through the galaxy might create gravitational waves and disturb the Oort comet cloud and periodically produce comet showers big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs about every 30million years…and it could happen again he believes.
He said the earth passing through the disk of dark matter would also absorb it leading to internal heating and therefore volcanism, tectonic upheavals, changes in sea level and climate, and changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, events also thought to have contributed to the extinctions.
Small amounts of dark matter escaping could be responsible for events like the 2004 Boxing day tsunami or worse in the future, he speculated.
Mr Rampino argues no one has yet identified a single an unambiguous cause for “dramatic and catastrophic events” periodically experienced on earth such as tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
But his theories have met with scepticism.
Jo Bovy, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advance Study in Princeton, New Jersey, said the foundation requirement for Rampino’s conjectures – the presence of a layer of dark matter somewhere in the Milky Way – was speculative at best.
He said: “Statistically, there is only a few percent chance that such a thin disk of dark matter exists.”
Without that the theory did not even get off the ground, he claimed.
Source: http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/572109/Dark-matter-wiped-out-the-dinosaurs-and-could-end-human-race-scientist-claims
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