February 2017
Growing space agency dilemma
..., London, Mexico City or Sydney could be wiped out, or much worse. We might within the next century face a mass-extinction event like the K-T catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs and up to 75 per cent of all species on Earth...
July 2019
Settling the final frontier
... a single-planet species will not survive.” Griffin noted that entire species have been wiped out in mass extinctions on average every 30 million years. “If we humans want to survive for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, we must ultimately...
January 2017
Elon Musk and Mars - looking for a snowball effect
... questions of planetary protection, fearing speculative worst-case scenarios in which terrestrial micro-organisms caused a mass extinction of hypothetical Martian ones, or Martian microbes proved fatal to human life. These responses explored a number...
12 July 2016
Did two ancient supernovas cause cell mutation and climate change on Earth?
... you might speed up evolution,” explained Merlot. It is perhaps coincidental, but around 2.59 million years ago a minor mass extinction occurred. This may be connected to a cooling in Earths climate, as the increased abundance of cosmic rays ionised...
September 2016
Life in the extremes: confessions of an astrobiologist
... For instance, giant volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts are the most likely explanations for many mass extinctions that occurred during Earth’s history. On the other hand, hydrothermal vents, certain sedimentary formations and other...
18 January 2019
Asteroid impacts on the increase since the age of the dinosaurs
... neighbouring Moon have been the subject of frequent asteroid strikes - many of which have been correlated with mass extinction events. In fact the Earth was pummelled so much in its early history, we even have a name for it; the...
