Bye Bye Nibiru.

I stumbled across this article whilst reading this thread and would like to mention I think it's worth reading.

A massive extinction like the one that claimed the dinosaurs has hit the Earth like clockwork every 27 million years, a new fossil analysis confirms. But the study claims to rule out one controversial explanation: a dark stellar companion called Nemesis that sends a regular rain of deadly comets toward Earth. “The main astronomical ideas you can come up with that could cause something like this just don’t work,” said physicist Adrian Melott of the University of Kansas, a co-author of the new study.

Source (Wired).

...and this is where it gets interesting.

But now, Melott and co-author Richard Bambach of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., say that’s not actually what happens. The extinctions come almost exactly every 27 million years, they say, to a confidence interval of 99 percent. “It’s really too good, it’s too sharp and fixed,” Melott said. “It’s like a clock.” Melott and Bambach compared two huge data sets going back 500 million years, twice as far as the 1984 study looked. One dataset, the Sepkoski database, is a continuation of the original study. The other, the Paleobiology Database, was compiled between 2000 and 2008. Both sets include many fossils that have been found and cataloged since 1984. The researchers searched mathematically for patterns that were common to both datasets, and found that both showed an excess of organisms disappearing every 27 million years, too regularly to be caused by a shiftable star.

I'm not stating this as fact, after all it's based on analysis of statistical data that the scientists themselves say is 99% accurate over a period of 27 Million years, so I guess that leaves a lot of room for error.
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[edit on 5/9/2010 by ArMaP]

So when's the next extinction coming?

so the shiftable companion star is not the cause ?
Since they say shiftable, I just take it they know something..

reply to post by jokei


Every 27 million years eh? Sooo when is the next extinction level event due to occur? And do they know what causes this event? Is it perhaps because we pass through the black hole? Seems like these articles give 1 answer and leave you with countless others.

[edit on 5-9-2010 by packinupngoin]

Earth is currently going through a mass extinction. Hadn't you noticed?

We're almost there folks.

reply to post by packinupngoin


I believe it was due about 5 million years ago. I could be wrong, I read a thread on here done by a math wiz having some fun. Could not remember the title for the life of me. Search it up though.

just done reading a few articles (first 5 or so pages on goole about mass extinction) and there saying thet there has been longer and longer gaps between the extinctions????

I can't agree with this conclusion but found the article interesting nonetheless. As Richard A. Muller says in the article, "[I] think Melott is 'coming to too strong a conclusion'", which I agree with. They believe that its orbit would be tweaked by the Milky Way and other stars and estimate that it should vary by 15 to 30 percent which is in disagreement with the 99 percent accuracy of the 27 million year extinction events. There's still some leeway in each and a bit of assumptions on the orbit, in my opinion.

From another article on the same research:

Melott said that back in the 1980s other researchers had posited that a small, dark star — dubbed “Nemesis” — orbiting around the sun would occasionally interact with the Oort Cloud, a faraway collection of ice and rock that forms comets.

If the hypothesis were true, Melott said, the forces of larger objects and other stars would affect Nemesis’ regular orbit enough to jar it off its regular path. Melott said that if Nemesis were the true cause of these extinctions, the extinctions should have been more sporadic.

Source

Maybe I'm being ignorant here, but if one doesn't know the exact orbit of an object how can one state that the unknown object will encounter orbit altering objects and influences along its orbit? Also, if the object is unknown how can one state that "the forces of larger objects" would affect it if one doesn't know the size of the unknown object?

He's referring to a specific assumption and then discrediting the entire possibility based on that theory. It seems quite logical to look for something with a regular orbit to explain a recurring terrestrial event but now something that's usually regular isn't very regular because of the possibility of it encountering something along the way that makes it irregular. Maybe someone more knowledgeable on the subject could inform me of how many binary star systems we have researched and how their orbits have changed through time because of orbit altering encounters.

And just for the record, I believe that we don't know enough to know what to believe.


Despite his conclusion, this is supportive of something and might be the best part of the article:

“It’s really too good, it’s too sharp and fixed,” Melott said. “It’s like a clock.”

“It was a slam dunk on finding exactly what you would expect to find if they [Raup and Sepkoski] were right, which surprised me,” Melott said. “We have strong confirmation of this periodicity, it’s exactly the same one that those guys found in ‘84, and we have no clue what’s causing it.”

Original source

Edited for spelling and clarity.

[edit on 9/5/2010 by Three_moons]

Thanks for sharing the article. interesting read.

Originally posted by mileslloyd
So when's the next extinction coming?

three weeks from tomorrow, 4:16 pm, Eastern Standard Time.
seriously, how are we supposed to know? i just made that up.

Originally posted by packinupngoin
reply to post by jokei

 

Every 27 million years eh? Sooo when is the next extinction level event due to occur? And do they know what causes this event? Is it perhaps because we pass through the black hole? Seems like these articles give 1 answer and leave you with countless others.

It's how science and other disciplines do it. answer one question, sure, but replace it with a few more. they have to preserve their religion (science/discipline) because it is their bread and butter.

look at Steven Hawkings. He is on record as saying even if he had the ultimate answer, he wouldn't share it because then what would there be left to do for anyone else. (wow).

sorta hard to finish the race if one steven hawking does not pass the batton to the next racer, because he has it in his head he already won the race. ya, thanks steven.

[edit on 5-9-2010 by Esoteric Teacher]

reply to post by mileslloyd & post by packinupngoin



According to This source:

Fortunately for us, we’ve only had about 11 million years since the last regularly scheduled mass extinction.

“But there are extinction events outside of this one, too.”

Originally posted by packinupngoin
reply to post by jokei

 

Every 27 million years eh? Sooo when is the next extinction level event due to occur? And do they know what causes this event? Is it perhaps because we pass through the black hole? Seems like these articles give 1 answer and leave you with countless others.

[edit on 5-9-2010 by packinupngoin]

Lol... Pass through a black hole... That's too funny.

The earth would be torn to pieces. Do yourself a favor and read a bit about how black holes work.

Originally posted by Edews

Originally posted by packinupngoin
reply to post by jokei

 

Every 27 million years eh? Sooo when is the next extinction level event due to occur? And do they know what causes this event? Is it perhaps because we pass through the black hole? Seems like these articles give 1 answer and leave you with countless others.

[edit on 5-9-2010 by packinupngoin]

Lol... Pass through a black hole... That's too funny.

The earth would be torn to pieces. Do yourself a favor and read a bit about how black holes work.

I'm sorry are you serious? There is a black hole at the center of our galaxy. Some scientists say we(Earth) either pass through it or with enough of a distance for it to vastly affect our Ecosystem. Now go research that.

The age of enlightenment is near!

Soon we will enter the next age

reply to post by jokei


Nibiru... I think you are in the wrong forum...

reply to post by packinupngoin


First, the speculated black hole is at the center of the galaxy, while we are in one of the arms. Secondly, one cannot pass through a black hole. Look up what a curvature singularity is and their relation to black holes.

Originally posted by Xcalibur254
reply to post by packinupngoin

 

First, the speculated black hole is at the center of the galaxy, while we are in one of the arms. Secondly, one cannot pass through a black hole. Look up what a curvature singularity is and their relation to black holes.

I'll nit-pick.

While we have many theories regarding the physics of a 'black hole' and the concept of a singularity that has yet to be observed - it is all theory and speculation. There are just as many theories based on an entropic model that predict vastly different behavior of black-holes (as far as what happens at/near the 'event horizon' - or the 'stuff' composing the black hole mass). They just aren't as causality-breaking brain-busters you can use to woo and awe.

Pretty much - just saying that we don't really have any authority to dictate black holes. We don't even come close to understanding gravity, much less what happens when you start breaking the universe with it.

A massive extinction like the one that claimed the dinosaurs has hit the Earth like clockwork every 27 million years, a new fossil analysis confirms.

That would mean there were 6 mass extinctions during the time the dinosaurs were alive, and 2.5 mass extinctions since they died.

source

It's amazing we're even here.

Originally posted by maya27

Earth is currently going through a mass extinction. Hadn't you noticed?

We're almost there folks.

I am soooo tired of waiting for this,
It is like watching paint dry