New research reveals that Earth’s geological history is tied to astronomical motions—not just the planet’s interior.
A team of scientists has concluded that that has occurred over the past 260 million years and brought about mass extinctions of life during these periods was primarily caused by massive volcanic eruptions and the resulting environmental crises.
Its analysis, which appears in the journal Earth-Science Reviews, shows that these eruptions released large amounts of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to extreme greenhouse climate warming and bringing about near-lethal or lethal conditions to our planet.
Astronomical Cycles and Earth’s Climate
Significantly, these phenomena—which occur every 26 to 33 million years—coincided with critical changes in the planet’s orbit in the solar system that follow the same cyclical patterns, the researchers add.
“The Earth’s geologic processes, long considered to be strictly determined by events within the planet’s interior, may in fact be controlled by astronomical cycles in the solar system and the DOI: 10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104548