Scientist blames dark matter at centre of Milky Way for mass extinctions on Earth - 'There is a pattern'

A study has found that our planet's most destructive disasters strike based on a regular cycle. These are events that have the potential to end all life on Earth or create conditions that eventually wipe everyone off the face of our planet. Professor Michael Rampino, a geologist at New York University, says that any of these disasters occurs every 27 million years. His scientific predictions, published in the journal Evolving Earth, show that Earth could be due for one such event in the near future.

Rampino analysed 89 geological events that struck in the last 260 years. This includes mass extinction events, asteroid collisions, a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, fluctuations in sea levels, oceans losing their oxygen, and changes in seafloor spreading rates. He claims that all of them are linked with a hidden chain, a common planetary pulse that remains a mystery.

Three cycles of destruction and mass extinctions

While the idea was first proposed in the 1980s, it was widely dismissed by critics as baseless. However, Rampino is almost sure that a single thread ties all mass extinction events. He further claims that there are shorter mini–cycles which connect some events every 8.9 million years, while some had a longer cycle of up to 270 million years. In one case, he found that the ages of cooled lava from massive volcanic eruptions spread over thousands of square miles matched almost exactly with his 27–million–year–cycle.

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Earth's orbit influenced by solar system and Milky Way likely trigger geological events

Rampino believes that they could be occurring because of the shifts taking place deep inside Earth. He, in turn, connects this with Earth's orbit around the Sun, and goes a step further and further links them to the galaxy. Our planet's semi–liquid mantle circulates at a slow speed. When this movement changes, it could trigger deadly volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and other geological processes.

Rampino also found that variations in Earth's orbit and its movements within the galaxy as a whole also affect the occurrences on our planet. Our solar system is constantly moving, and every 30 million years it crosses the plane of the Milky Way. At this time, comets out in the Oort cloud are disturbed, sending some of them towards us. He noted that the wobbling of the solar system coincides with major events on Earth.

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Dark matter collide and trigger major upheaval on Earth

He then suggests that Earth gathers dark matter particles when it moves through the galactic centre, which then gather in the core, collide and annihilate each other, causing heat to be released, "which could initiate an intense pulse of global geologic activity." He says this process could be up to 250 times the Earth's present internal heat flux. Rampino says nine of the Earth's 13 mass extinctions occurred within 0.3 to six million years of crossing the galactic plane.

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He says that the last time Earth passed the plane was three to four million years ago. This means it will happen again in the next two million years. However, Rampino admits the topic remains controversial, has limited evidence and is counter to interpretations of the nature of the geologic record.