It sounds like the plot of a bad thriller. A scientist, alone in his lab, is busy examining the archeological data when he notices a strange pattern. He flips back through his pages, unable to believe his eyes and hurriedly pulls out a calculator to confirm his suspicions. He punches numbers in- his hands shaking- as the camera zooms in on his face as it slowly drains of blood.
 |
| Oh no… it’s all the numbers! Credit |
He rushes to the phone to call a colleague and we listen in as he explains that all of the major extinctions in the fossil record seem to happen on a predictable cycle, including the Cretaceous-Tertiary that killed off the dinosaurs. Every 27 million years, like clockwork, an extinction event happens.
And he thinks he knows why. He’s not sure, but what if all of the major extinction events were because of comets? At least two of them (the Cretaceous-Tertiary and Late Eocene) can be traced to them. And what if the reason why is because there’s something out beyond the solar system, some sort of evil twin to our sun, with an odd orbit that periodically sent comets from the Oort Cloud our way?
“Call it… hmmm…” the scientist thinks out loud over the phone. “Call it Nemesis.”
 |
| Apparently after the Greek Goddess and not the Resident Evil character Credit |
Fade to title screen, right? Might even be worth a couple of bucks in the theater, especially if they got a couple of aging action stars to go fight off the evil sun (maybe Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Sigourney Weaver) that was about to plunge the Earth into death and destruction. But, excepting the imminent destruction, this isn’t a movie at all. It’s actually a semi-reputable scientific theory.
It’s called the Nemesis Hypothesis, and there does seem to be evidence that there could be a large object- potentially even a brown dwarf star- lurking beyond the solar system and hurling deadly comets at us at fairly regular intervals.
 |
| Despite what your t-shirt says Credit |
But how? And why haven’t we seen this star? And oh-my-goodness-is-it-going-to-kill-us-tomorrow?
We’ll discuss all this and more on Friday. Stay tuned!*
*Sorry, I’m moving and in the middle of several thousand other things! So this week’s article is being broken up for easier handling.