In its orbit around the galaxy, our Sun periodically crosses into dust lanes swept up by the galaxy's electromagnetic forces.
The dust acts as a blanket, trapping a percentage of the Sun's light, this warms the solar surface enough to kick fusion into overdrive and trigger a solar micronova.
That's pretty catastrophic for Earth. Survivable for the lucky and prepared, but a major disaster nonetheless.
The periodicity is about 12,000 years.
The last one was about 12,000 years ago...
Thanks, I’ll check out that book. Periodicity though is just a uniformitarian gradualist version of catastrophism. :^)
“The periodicity is about 12,000 years.
The last one was about 12,000 years ago...”
One of my pet theories is that Ice Ages are caused by the solar system entering a narrow band of cosmic dust. Thereby reducing solar energy reaching Earth, Sometimes the dust is thicker sometimes not so much. If narrow enough would be hard to detect until fairly close. 12,000 years ago fits in with the end of the last Ice Age. If the dust happened to occur during a prolonged solar minimum that could magnify the effect.