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  • What do you think killed the dinosaurs? A comet? A volcano? What about Dark matter?

  • Hey guys Julia here for DNews

  • Over 65.5 million years ago a comet slammed into earth sending a giant death plume of

  • debris into the atmosphere, killing almost all life on Earth including most of the dinosaurs.

  • Weve figured this one out, weve got the evidence. A huge crater in the middle

  • of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. But what sent that comet hurtling to Earth in the first

  • place?

  • Well some geophysicists like Michael Rampino, from New York University noticed something

  • strange in the fossil record. They found that every 30 million years or so, there seemed

  • to be a mass extinction. Some of these were smaller extinctions, but most of the big 5

  • mass extinctions match up with this timeline.

  • So what could be working like clockwork to trigger a great loss of life on this planet?

  • Well some scientists like Rampino have an idea. They point the finger at dark matter.

  • Yup that strange mass of something out there that we can’t see but only detect through

  • its gravitational effects on objects around it. Some estimates say as much as 85% of all

  • the stuff out there in the universe, is actually dark matter.

  • Theoretical physicist Lisa Randall suggests in her new book "Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs:

  • The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe" that dark matter might be responsible for

  • sending comets to Earth. So there might be dark matter concentrating near the center

  • of our galaxy, the Milky Way and forms a kind of thin cloud. Randall suggests that maybe

  • it’s more of a disk made up of particles 100 times larger than a photon. The disk might

  • be thin and dense. As our solar systems moves through the disk, it bobs up and down, like

  • an apple in barrel full of water. And those bobs are pretty regular, about every 30 million

  • years or so. Because the disk is so dense, the gravitational tug would affect planetary

  • bodies in our own solar system. It could even knock comets loose from their orbit in the

  • Oort cloud, a cloud of dust and comets, sending them towards Earth. And maybe this was the

  • case for the rouge body that slammed into Earth 65.5 million years ago.

  • But it’s not just rogue comets this dark matter cloud could trigger. It could trigger

  • volcanoes! That’s what Rampino suggested in an article published in the journal Monthly

  • Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. He claims that the dark matter particles gather

  • in clumps in the disk. And those clumps get swept up by the Earth as it passes through

  • the disk. These particles collect in the center of the Earth where they reach sufficient densities

  • annihilate each other, producing enormous amounts of heat. This heats up the Earth’s

  • core by a few hundred degrees which expands the molten lava putting pressure on the crust

  • until it erupts in huge volcanic eruptions. Maybe huge enough to wipe out most of life

  • on the planet.

  • Though I should caution these ideas are still speculative at this point. There’s still

  • not a lot of evidence for a disc of dark matter in the center of our galaxy. There’s some

  • evidence that our nearest neighboring galaxy Andromeda might have one. And evidence of

  • our own is yet to come, the European Space Agency’s Gaia missions could reveal more

  • about dark matter. The mission will track the movement of hundreds of thousands of stars

  • throughout the Milky Way, through which we could learn about the distribution of dark

  • matter.

  • Till then, other scientists like Coryn Bailer-Jones, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute

  • for Astronomy told Scientific American that they remain skeptical about such a hypothesis.

  • Some claim that the evidence is scarce for a clumpy dark matter disc, and others like

  • Bailer-Jones even question the periodic nature of mass extinctions. So while it’s a very

  • cool hypothesis, I mean who doesn’t love dark matter, dinosaurs and volcanoes in ONE

  • HYPOTHESIS? I’d say more research is needed.

  • You know what else is really cool together? CLONING AND DINOSAURS! Recently, we discovered

  • actual fossilized dinosaur eggs. Does this mean we're closer to cloning a dinosaur and

  • starting an awesomely terrifying theme park? Check out this video to learn more.

  • Hey Guys, if you like the shirt i have on and want to check out other DNews shirts be

  • sure to go to the link below. We have a ton of cool science shirts for your buying pleasure.

  • AND if youre a first time buyer use the promo code DNEWS for 10% off at checkout.

What do you think killed the dinosaurs? A comet? A volcano? What about Dark matter?

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暗物質殺死了恐龍嗎? (Did Dark Matter Kill The Dinosaurs?)

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    Serena 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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