Today's sensationalist headline brought to you courtesy of Space.com.
Harvard scientists are suggesting that the pattern of large-scale planetary extinction that seems to be caused by meteor or comet bombardment could be caused by the sun's galactic orbit interacting with a sphere of dark matter.
The Sun's orbit oscillates as it travels around the edge of the galaxy. This oscillation causes the Sun to travel through the dark matter disk and the gravitational effect could conceivably include disruption of the Ort cloud, causing cometary bombardment of the inner planets.
The dark matter disk would replace "Nemesis" as the cause of periodic extinctions.
Personally, I'm just waiting until a dark matter created asteroid disaster makes it into a SyFy "Originals" movie. Any guess as to how long that will take?
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