Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs

By Lisa Randall,

Book cover of Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe

Book description

The most thrilling, genre-busting, unlikely science book you'll ever read, from the world-renowned, multi-award-winning, superstar physicist Lisa Randal.

66 million years ago, a ten-mile-wide object from outer space hurtled into the Earth at incredible speed. The impact annihilated the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet.…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Randall, a noted astrophysicist, explains how the extinction of the dinosaurs could be related to galactic astronomy and the distribution of dark matter in the galaxy. Her fascinating idea involves disturbances of our myriad Oort Cloud comets at the very edge of the solar system by encounters with clouds of exotic dark matter. The collisions with dark matter, the resulting comet storms and mass extinctions occur roughly every 30 million years as we cycle through the galaxy. Her provocative hypothesis provides a potential remarkable consilience of astronomy, geology, and the history of life.

From Michael's list on mass extinctions of life.

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