Volcanogenic Dark Matter and Mass Extinctions

Abstract

The passage of the Earth through dense clumps of dark matter, the presence of which are predicted by certain cosmologies, would produce large quantities of heat in the interior of this planet through the capture and subsequent annihilation of dark matter particles. This heat can cause large-scale volcanism which could in turn have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and other mass extinctions. The periodicity of such volcanic outbursts agrees with the frequency of palaeontological mass extinctions as well as the observed periodicity in the occurrence of the largest flood basalt provinces on the globe.

6 pages in Latex file

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Dark Matter Detection in the Light of Recent Experimental Results
• Towards Closing the Window on Strongly Interacting Dark Matter: Far-Reaching Constraints from Earth's Heat Flow
• On The Timescale Forcing in Astrobiology
• Planet-bound dark matter and the internal heat of Uranus, Neptune, and hot-Jupiter exoplanets
• Galactic Punctuated Equilibrium: How to Undermine Carter's Anthropic Argument in Astrobiology
• Stellar Shocks From Dark Matter Asteroid Impacts
• Double Mass Extinctions and the Volcanogenic Dark Matter Scenario
• Anoxia duirng the Late Permian Binary Mass Extinction and Dark Matter
• A New Signature of Dark Matter
• Gamma Rays from UltraCompact Minihaloes: Effects on the Earth's Atmosphere and Links to Mass Extinction Events