Friday, March 22, 2013

Answer To Question 219

A219: The Death Star Theory refers to the fact that mass extinctions are periodic, and may be caused by the Earth's passing through a cloud of comets (the Oort cloud) every 26 million years. Some people have hypothesized that there is a yet-to-be-discovered dark star or perhaps a planet (called, appropriately enough, Nemesis) orbiting in the outer reaches of our solar system. This body disrupts the Oort cloud (once every 26 million years), sending comets into the inner parts of the solar system, some of which hit Earth and cause mass extinctions.

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