Posted on 05/02/2008 8:53:50 AM PDT by blam
Sun's Movement Through Milky Way Regularly Sends Comets Hurtling, Coinciding With Mass Life Extinctions
A large body of scientific evidence now exists that support the hypothesis that a major asteroid or comet impact occurred in the Caribbean region at the boundary of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods in Earth's geologic history. Such an impact is suspected to be responsible for the mass extinction of many floral and faunal species, including the large dinosaurs, that marked the end of the Cretaceous period. (Credit: Art by Don Davis / Courtesy of NASA)
ScienceDaily (May 2, 2008) — The sun's movement through the Milky Way regularly sends comets hurtling into the inner solar system -- coinciding with mass life extinctions on earth, a new study claims. The study suggests a link between comet bombardment and the movement through the galaxy.
Scientists at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology built a computer model of our solar system's movement and found that it "bounces" up and down through the plane of the galaxy. As we pass through the densest part of the plane, gravitational forces from the surrounding giant gas and dust clouds dislodge comets from their paths. The comets plunge into the solar system, some of them colliding with the earth.
The Cardiff team found that we pass through the galactic plane every 35 to 40 million years, increasing the chances of a comet collision tenfold. Evidence from craters on Earth also suggests we suffer more collisions approximately 36 million years. Professor William Napier, of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, said: "It's a beautiful match between what we see on the ground and what is expected from the galactic record."
The periods of comet bombardment also coincide with mass extinctions, such as that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Our present position in the galaxy suggests we are now very close to another such period.
While the "bounce" effect may have been bad news for dinosaurs, it may also have helped life to spread. The scientists suggest the impact may have thrown debris containing micro-organisms out into space and across the universe.
Centre director Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe said: "This is a seminal paper which places the comet-life interaction on a firm basis, and shows a mechanism by which life can be dispersed on a galactic scale."
The paper, by Professor Napier and Dr Janaki Wickramasinghe, is to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Adapted from materials provided by Cardiff University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
sigh... If you read the trail of posts, you’ll figure out why I invoked the term.
I did read the chain of posts and you correctly invoked the term but incorrectly concluded that the article was 'science'.
The article is scientism under definitions 1 & 2.
You are arguing the article was not scientism under one part of definition #3.
sci·en·tism –noun
1. the style, assumptions, techniques, practices, etc., typifying or regarded as typifying scientists.
2. the belief that the assumptions, methods of research, etc., of the physical and biological sciences are equally appropriate and essential to all other disciplines, including the humanities and the social sciences.
3. scientific or pseudoscientific language.
sigh...
Can you provide a citation for your definition of scientism?
You apparently have a comprehension problem. Reread the thread until you understand. Optional: read a few books on General Relativity.
Well, I dunno about all that. It just may be that the sun drags us through hostile areas of the galaxy where abideth many objects with which to play bumper planets.
"...and shows a mechanism by which life can be dispersed on a galactic scale."
HOR$E$HIT! But I guess they couldn't pass up the opportunity to suggest a hypothetical that scores points within the scientific community™.
Ha! Nice one, I loved that album when I was growing up. It was one of my parents’ best “long car trip” tapes. :)
Centre director Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe said: "This is a seminal paper which places the comet-life interaction on a firm basis, and shows a mechanism by which life can be dispersed on a galactic scale."
Aw shucks, they left out my favorite word: PANSPERMIA!
Where you dreaming when you wrote that? ;)
Uh-oh, forgot to add “panspermia” to the keywords.
You’re probably right, I must have been half asleep, I screwed up a word.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2010555/posts?page=7#7
"Forgive me if it goes astray"... ;')
:’) to save time, I was answering them simultaneously.
Since people use sunblock for the sun, maybe we need some cometblock...
Polar shift.
In the utube clip, he said that part of the affect was possibly polar shift of the planet.
Some say the poles shift every 10-15K years due to other natural causes such as increased (uneven) weight at the poles when things get cooler around here.
Topsy turvy place, huh?
And of course, BOTH events are either “very close” or “overdue”.
I’ll save Laz the trouble, WE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
Some say the poles shift every 10-15K years due to other natural causes such as increased (uneven) weight at the poles when things get cooler around here.Flem-Ath (modifying Hapgood) sez that the ice caps get loaded up unevenly, and it results in a "crustal displacement", hmm, every 40K(?) years. :')
What we need to do is put more money into tracking Near Earth Objects (NEOs), especially in the southern hemisphere where there are far fewer amateur astronomers tracking these things. It would not have to be hugely expensive. Just getting the appropriate small telescopes out to interested science/education groups in a coordinated sky surveying program. Then if something big is getting too close, we might have enough advance notice to actually do something useful about it.
Put such a program under the auspices of the UN. Then we will have enough notice and still not do anything useful to avert the catastrophe. (/gratuitous swipe at UN).
dictionary.com
I did. Apparently you didn't.
“Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS.”
Einstein, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics (New-York: Simon and Schuster), 1961.
“The relation of the two pictures [geocentricity and heliocentricity] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view.... Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.”
Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973.
Another uninformed relativist. No surprise.
Thank you. In this instance, I’d have to say that a better definition actually can be found on (believe it or not) Wikepedia
“The term scientism can be used as a neutral term to describe the view that natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, such as philosophical, religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations, and over other fields of inquiry, such as the social sciences. It also can imply a criticism of a perceived misapplication or misuse of the authority of science in either of two directions:
1. The term is often used as a pejorative to indicate the improper usage of science or scientific claims. In this sense, the charge of scientism often is used as a counter-argument to appeals to scientific authority in contexts where science might not apply, such as when the topic is perceived to be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry.
2. The term is also used to pejoratively refer to “the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry,” with a concomitant “elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience”. It thus expresses a position critical of (at least the more extreme expressions of) positivism. (Compare: scientific imperialism.)”
Ah, but the nuances come later. You are aware that there are differences between being locked in an accelerating spaceship, and being in a gravitational field, I’m sure. Similar issues occur with rotating reference frames.
As a practical matter, it takes a lot less energy to rotate an object, than to rotate the entire universe around it.
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