That's when the aliens come back for the harvest.
Yummy :)
Life on Earth gets wiped out every 27 million years, say boffins
Much of life on Earth gets regularly wiped out every 27 million years, according to boffins. It had been thought that this was caused by a dark star named "Nemesis", but apparently that was wrong. The next globo-extinction event is due in about 16 million years' time. A plot of extinction intensity in the past. Credit: Richard …
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Monday 12th July 2010 14:13 GMT max allan
Hmmm...
Lies, damn lies and statistics?
Without delving int the source data it looks to me like there are some big gaps in the 27 million year cycle. I wonder if there is some sort of underlying "approximately it was X when Y happened" that tends to bunch around the 27 mill marks? Like carbon dating having some unreliable/extra reliable spots that lumps things together. So, for example, actually the die off has been going for 20M years but we only notice it at the end.
I, for one, will welcome our new overlords in 16 million years.
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Monday 12th July 2010 14:13 GMT paulc
orbital period?
question, how long does it take the solar system to perform an orbit of the galaxy? also while doing so, wouldn't we be passing in and out of the spiral arms (I believe they are waves of compression and do not orbit at the same rate) and therefore in and out of material which would block the sun's output significantly.
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Monday 12th July 2010 14:28 GMT Sean O'Connor 1
Dubious
This science sounds to me about as rigorous as some of the climate science stuff. Looks to me like they've come up with a theory that that there's a big extinction every 27 million years and then taken a very random looking graph and allowed themselves a lot of leeway to fit their theory onto it. Did they try values other than 27 million years and (with that same flexibility) see if they fitted too? Or produce random computer generated graphs and see if they could squeeze the 27 million year fit to them too.
My money's on that extinction graph being completely random and very noisy so with sufficient fudging you could fit pretty much anything on it.
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Tuesday 13th July 2010 07:51 GMT A. Coatsworth
Re: whats more intresting
The previous intelligent species survived the massive extinction in their cities in Antarctic and deep under the Pacific Ocean... And they are still there, waiting for the right time to take back the Earth.
Mine's the one with the Necro...*Tekeli-li* *Tekeli-li*
ARRGGGHHH!!!
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Monday 12th July 2010 14:48 GMT Nick Ryan
Dark stars...
Dark stars... why is this kind of nonsense so common?
i.e. You can't see it, but it must be there - it's magic. As in "we can't think of a sensible or more plausible explanation and we don't know what is causing it so rather than admitting that we have no idea we'll instead make up something invisible to believe in instead".
Rings a bell in other fields of humanity as well.
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Tuesday 13th July 2010 08:10 GMT Highlander
other fiels of dak...
Other fields, you mean that whole dark matter, dark energy thing where Physics can't figure out 3/4 of the expected mass of the universe, so they make it up because that way their math works?
As you say having an invisible thing that influences the universe and is necessary for it's very existence and creation does sound familiar. I guess we should all ask God about it next time we talk over a pint...
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Monday 12th July 2010 14:48 GMT BristolBachelor
Oh my god, quick!!
Someone has put a graph in a scientific paper.
We don't really understand it, and the model just says we are all going to die, but we don't understand the model, or know if it is right.
Quick!! - rush in lots of "Nemesis" taxes. We must be seen to do something. Also enough worrying about this will make people forget about section 44...
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Monday 12th July 2010 15:00 GMT Dan Breen
16,000,000 years away?
But with a +/- of 10,000,000 years, we could be as little as 6,000,000 years away from extinction - OMG won't someone please think of the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren!
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Monday 12th July 2010 15:00 GMT Ian Ferguson
Stats fail
Anyone could generate a similar theory by conjuring a randomised graph and picking out regular-ish peaks. There's nothing 'regular' or 'ordered' about those peaks.
All it proves is that extinctions occur, at a varying scale (which we knew anyway), sometimes correlating to the theory of 'mass extinctions' (which is statistically logical anyway).
Related to this article: This paranoia-fuelled theory that the BP Gulf disaster will trigger a 'world-killing' methane bubble event. Both theories are based in truth, but utilise dubious physics and statistics to reach incredible conclusions.
http://www.helium.com/items/1882339-doomsday-how-bp-gulf-disaster-may-have-triggered-a-world-killing-event
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Monday 12th July 2010 15:03 GMT Tim Bergel
18 times???
Out of the twenty 27-million-year markers shown on the graph, about 8 (depending on how fussy you are) don't really have an associated mass-extinction. Two of the circles appear to be (fairly) precisely in the middle of two of the markers, and two markers have a pair of extinctions.
There is no way I can see 18 occurrences no matter how generous I am. And how anybody can describe this as "regularity of the extinctions" is beyond me - looks like complete rubbish.
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Monday 12th July 2010 15:03 GMT Nigel 11
Use Fourier Analysis!
Take the power spectrum of the sequence. If there's really a 27-My periodicity, there will be a spike at that frequency in the spectrum. If there isn't, thre won't be. If it's not an exact 27My cycle the peak will be broadened and not as high, but still above background noise. If it's wishful thinking, there will be no noticeable peak.
I have to express doubt as to how accurately they can date extinction events hundreds of My past. It would oh so easy to allow belief in an extinction cycle to "close up" the error bars. 270My +/- 8My, rather than 270My +/- 14My, say. (The latter could not significantly support the theory, because the deviation covers an entire cycle).
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Monday 12th July 2010 15:29 GMT Richard Scratcher
Flippin' Poles
Geology tells us that the Earth's Poles can move about and actually swap position over long periods of time. This would remove the Earth's vital magnetosphere, which protects all life from deadly radiation emanating from our Sun.
Recent studies have confirmed that the Poles have been moving over the last few years although many of them have gone back home again having been disenchanted by crappy weather and poor quality lager.
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Monday 12th July 2010 19:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Okay assuming your first paragraph wasn't a joke
Do you mean magnetic poles or geographic poles? Magnetic poles are ephemeral not only waxing and waning, but moving all the time. Yes they can degrade to such a point that the Earth is exposed to the solar wind, but these periods don't seem to coincide with mass extinctions.
The geographic poles wobble, but like the Weebles they don't fall down since they are more or less locked by the Moon.
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Tuesday 13th July 2010 08:10 GMT Nigel 11
Poles flip far too often
THe Earth's magnetic poles flip a lot more frequently than every 27My. Every few tens of thousands of years, if I remember right. Same sort of frequency as supervolcanoes. There's a fossil magnetic record in the form of the direction of magnetisation of the ocean floor, which is spreading at cm/year (10s of km per My) outwards from its molten source at the mid-ocean ridges.
During a flip the atmosphere would continue to provide protection from radiation. There isn't a major radiation problem at the poles, is there? Just pretty auroras in the sky. What will be lost during a flip, is the protection of the Earth's atmosphere *from* solar radiation. For geological values of "short" and "long", there's a short-term issue with global warming, and a long-term issue of the Earth's atmosphere being stripped off by the solar wind. "Long" hasn't happened yet - we still have an atmosphere. But one day, the earth's core will freeze and our atmoshere will go the way of Mars's. That's if the sun doesn't go red giant first, which it probably will.
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Tuesday 13th July 2010 08:10 GMT Retired Geek
Didn't Anyone Notice? It's Already Happened.
All the ecologists are screaming about the loss of bio-diversity caused by over development and habitat loss. The extinction of mega-fauna in the western hemisphere "coincidental" to the arrival of humanity 15,000 years ago (those native Americans who were so-o-o in harmony with Nature) is well documented. The deserts of the Middle East were the Garden of Eden, where agriculture started.
I see no reason for anything more exotic than a recurring biological cycle of evolving dominant life forms that reduce biodiversity by successfully out breeding the other species. We see micro examples of this here in the Gulf of Mexico when there is an algae "bloom" called "Red Tide" that kills off large numbers of fish and other bottom dwellers by blocking sunlight and reducing the oxygen in large (hundred mile) swaths of ocean.
The pattern could be trending towards fewer extinctions because all the species alive are descendants of survivors from previous cycles. We are clearly this cycle's dominant life form and we have been doing an admirable job of killing off the weaker species.
It doesn't require intelligence to muck up the ecology. Intelligence just lets us do it more quickly and on a global scale. Maybe as much as 16 mega years faster? Yea, us.
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Tuesday 13th July 2010 08:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Argh! I can't find my ....
.... towel and the dog has eaten the peanuts.
Looking at the accuracy of the statements made vs. the data available, I'd say a Pension Fund Manager has been involved somewhere along the line. Hey, there's a thought; perhaps another use for Paul the Octopus could be in Pension Fund Management?
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
