An Exploding Star 65 Light-Years Away From Earth May Have Triggered a Mass Extinction
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
An Exploding Star 65 Light-Years Away From Earth May Have Triggered a Mass Extinction:
Life was trying, but it wasn't working out. As the Late Devonian period dragged on, more and more living things died out, culminating in one of the greatest mass extinction events our planet has ever witnessed, approximately 359 million years ago.
The culprit responsible for so much death may not have been local, scientists say. In fact, it might not have even come from our Solar System.
[...] In their new work, Fields and his team explore the possibility that the dramatic decline in ozone levels coinciding with the Late Devonian extinction might not have been a result of volcanism or an episode of global warming.
Instead, they suggest it's possible the biodiversity crisis exposed in the geological record could have been caused by astrophysical sources, speculating that the radiation effects from a supernova (or multiple) approximately 65 light-years from Earth may have been what depleted our planet's ozone to such disastrous effect.
Journal Reference:
Brian D. Fields, Adrian L. Melott, John Ellis, et al. Supernova triggers for end-Devonian extinctions [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2013774117)
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