Is there a genocidal countdown built into the motion of our solar system? Recent work at Cardiff University suggests that our system's orbit through the Milky Way encounters regular speedbumps - and by "speedbumps" we mean "potentially extinction-causing asteroids".
Professor William Napier and Dr Janaki Wickramasinghe have completed computer simulations of the motion of the Sun in our outer spiral-arm location in the Milky Way.
These models reveal a regular oscillation through the central galactic plane, where the surrounding dust clouds are the densest. The solar system is a non-trivial object, so its gravitational effects set off a far-reaching planetoid-pinball machine which often ends with comets hurled into the intruding system.
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