Earth mass extinctions of life occur in 27M-year cycles

usatoday.com

10 pointselsewhen3 comments

> The solar system passes through the crowded part of our Milky Way galaxy about every 30 million years.

How is that possible? At our sun’s distance from the center of the Milky Way, it’s rotating once about every 225-250 million years [1]. Plus the crowded part would be rotating along with us at roughly the same speed.

[1]https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/milky-way-rotation

IIRC it's a matter of how elliptical our path is. Sometimes our path passes through crowded planes. "Crowded" comparatively speaking, of course.

Oh good, we have about 1,300,000 generations to reach the stars. Whew. Got me worried there.

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