From the San Francisco Chronicle, about two researchers from Berkeley. The work is going to be published in Nature. LINK

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If that's so, then what was the extinction that ocurred three million years ago? It should be every 62 million years, right?

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that's what I thought, 3 million years is a pretty big oversight, even if not cosmically significant. I noticed that the article doesnt give an "oh no, we're overdue" message...

This is about the same article and definitely gives the message of 'overdue"


http://education.guardian.co.uk/high...437163,00.html

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In a debunking mood? Check this site: http://www.sherdog.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=54

You will always find conspiracies there. Open an account and expose them. But careful, they may call you a 'government sheep".

I came across this article which gives us another 13 million years
www.exn.ca/stories/2000/08/09/52.asp :wink:

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Does anyone have information about the mass extinctions of 127 million years ago and of 189 million years ago? They should exist for the pattern to be real, but I can't remember anything about them (from study, not personal experience ). They should fall between the Permian and the Cretacean (or End-Cretacean) extinction. There are loads of minor extinctions, but these seem to be irregular, and the last one (the Neogene) is only some 11000 years past, so if you take those into account, we're safe again. 8)

According to wikipedia, there is no such pattern, as the last mass extinctions were at 251, 200 (Triassic-Jurassic) and 65 million years ago.

And one could argue that a mass extinction is already happening, and that we are the cause...

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This "scientist" in the article( http://education.guardian.co.uk/high...437163,00.html ) seems so certain of his theory that he's willing to accept any reason for the extinction. And I just love this comforting prediction in the end "And, yes, we are due one soon, but I would not panic yet."
Now what the heck does that mean? that we're going to die but I shouldn't panic?(not that I am really...)

It is interesting to not ethat he is a physicist and not a paleontologist. While the scientific method should be the same, this guy overlooks or ignores vasts amounts of data in favor of the "gee, that's neet" factor common in pop-science.

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Has anyone actually seen the article in Nature yet? Just curious as to what it says, sometimes news artilces gloss over important details.

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Sometimes? Try always. Never trust a summary of a scientific result from the popular press. That often includes Science News and New Scientist magazines. It certainly includes Discover and Popular Mechanics. Scientific American is usually pretty good. The only place I really trust to get it right is the Physics News Update from the American Institute of Physics. Maybe that's because the articles are written by scientists with some jounalism training instead of journalists whose last science class may have been in high school. They also provide links to the original articles so that one can go and read them for oneself.

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What about Super Nova, don't they cause death and mass extinction?


Extinction that is if the star is far enough away for the Xray level to be low enough..


?

Edited to add- have you tried New Scientist magazine? That's written by scientists.

http://www.newscientist.com/home.ns

It also wouldn't be the first time someone made an erronous claim that they were going to be published in Nature (but I don't think that these particular researchers are doing so in this case). I've gone to Nature's website and haven't seen the article yet but the magazine is not available here so I can't check a hardcopy.

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Thanks for another link.

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