Bobbing along on the crest of a cosmic wave

I've noticed a lot of threads regarding asteroids and comets currently passing close by to Earth, and I suspect thousands more passing through the solar system

These events are not unusual or rare by any means. We all know about craters from meteorite impacts on Earth and all over other planets n our system.
So why do they occur and will it ever stop?

For those of us who have any knowledge of the movement of the solar system will be aware that the system rotates around a rotating sun, which all in turn moves along with the rotation of our Galaxy, the Milky way.

I wonder how many of you are aware that not only do we (we, as in our solar system) rotate in a rotating Galaxy, but that we actually bob up and down too.

It takes the solar system 225 million years to complete one orbit of our Galaxy and our system bobs up and down every 64 million years or so.

Scientists have discovered that;

the number of species has dropped about every 62 million years for at least the past 542 million years.
Most of Earth's biggest extinctions occurred when the solar system was at its most northerly point in its cycle, which stretches about 230 light years above the galactic plane.

But the entire Milky Way is moving due north at 200 kilometres per second towards a giant grouping of galaxies called the Virgo Cluster.

www.newscientist.com...

Now that's some pretty mind blowing data, but it does not answer where all the meteorites and asteroids come from. That model only explains cosmic rays.
There seems to be an answer to all this sudden amount of debris we are currently finding.

the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky in infrared light led by the University of Massachusetts, the astronomers are answering questions that have baffled scientists for decades and proving that our own Milky Way is consuming one of its neighbors in a dramatic display of ongoing galactic cannibalism. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to map the full extent of the Sagittarius galaxy and show in visually vivid detail how its debris wraps around and passes through our Milky Way. Sagittarius is 10,000 times smaller in mass than the Milky Way, so it is getting stretched out, torn apart and gobbled up by the bigger Milky Way.

A new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. Teams from the universities of Virginia and Massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a -- NEW STAR MAP showing our Solar System to be at the exact nexus crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining.

www.viewzone.com...

As you'll see in this data, there is a lot more going on that just the massive lumps of material happening by us at amazing speeds. It's the least of our worries. Some even think that Jupiter or Saturn may even become a second star in our system to make it a binary system. What effect would the ignition of one of these gas giants have on our planet?

So why the panic over a few lumps of rock? Because they represent a more 'clear and present danger' than anything else. We know that Jupiter is hung in one spot, yet the chances of it popping and becoming a sun in our life time is about as slim as Bush being impeached. The cycle of 'bob' takes a long time. way longer than our puny life spans, yet it does seem to have an effect.

Our planet is drawn through this cosmic soup filled with crunchy croutons and material we can't see with the naked eye, yet when you look at the data about our current position in the Galaxy and Cosmos then maybe you'll start to look at thing slightly differently.