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Terrestrial record of the Solar System's oscillation about the galactic plane

Nature volume 317, pages 338–341 (1985)Cite this article

Abstract

Impact cratering on the Earth over the past 600 Myr has been partly sporadic, partly episodic. The episodic component is suspected to have been cyclical, with a mean period of ∼32 Myr (refs 1, 2). According to a theory proposed to explain this phenomenon1, gravitational encounters between the Solar System and interstellar clouds of intermediate to large size occasionally disturb the outer Solar System comets, with the consequence that some of these comets fall into the inner regions of the system, where a few hit the Earth. Because the episodes of impact cratering, however, are not precisely periodic1,3, the galactic mechanism must be in part stochastic. The irregular part can be attributed to the randomness in the local space distribution of the interstellar clouds (and various other perturbing galactic objects4). The periodic component probably arises from the harmonic oscillation of the Sun about the galactic plane, since the large-scale space density of the interstellar clouds and other objects falls off with increasing distance from the plane. A new study of the observational evidence is presented here. Contrary to a claim by Thaddeus and Chanan5, the vertical scale height of the clouds seems to be sufficiently small and the Sun's vertical trajectory sufficiently large for the modulating effect of the Sun's galactovertical motion to be detectable in the terrestrial record of impact cratering with at least a 50% a priori probability.

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  1. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center, Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, New York, 10025, USA

    Richard B. Stothers

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Stothers, R. Terrestrial record of the Solar System's oscillation about the galactic plane. Nature 317, 338–341 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/317338a0

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