An artist’s depiction of the asteroid impact 65 million years ago that many scientists say is the most direct cause of the dinosaurs’ disappearance.
That an immense impact some 65 million years ago marked the end of the dinosaur era is now widely accepted. But could dark matter be involved in directing a comet into the Earth’s path?
That’s the question that Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall asks in her new book ‘Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs‘. How does this fit with our current understanding of dark matter? Does it require a new theory, radical or intuitive? It’s an interesting premise, and our friends at Physics World have reviewed the book, so check it out before you take the plunge.
Dark matter in our neighbourhood isn’t a new idea, nor even dark matter around the sun. We have experiments looking for dark matter – such as the XENON experiment hunting for WIMPs. But, it’s the first time I’ve seen it linked with the dinosaurs.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
Image: in the public domain. Created by Don Davis (NASA); available here on Wikimedia.
Categories: Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics
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