Is it dark matter's fault?

Could dark matter in space be the cause of mass extinctions on Earth? As bizarre as the possibility sounds, that is the thesis of a new paper that appeared February 18 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The paper claims that Earth’s movement through the dark matter of the Milky Way can disturb the orbits of comets and heat the Earth’s core, both of which could cause mass extinctions. Another reason to worry? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, this Sunday, we bring you three stories about extinction. 1. Zombie Sponge Reefs Are Lurking at the Bottom of the Sea The resurrection of glass sponge reefs proves extinction doesn’t have to be eternal. By Sarah DeWeerdt Kim Conway was examining the sea floor off the coast of British Columbia when he found them: strange mounds that showed up as hazy “ghosts” on his sonar imaging data. The year was 1984, and Conway was a member of a survey team working for Natural Resources Canada. He was expecting a sea floor with solid hills and valleys, and thought at first that the mounds might be a false bottom, maybe created by an old landslide or a blister of gas venting underneath the sediment. A follow-up mission several years later used cameras and coring instruments to reach a very different conclusion: The bumps were alive. READ MORE 2. If Half of All Species Go Extinct, Will One of Them Be Us? By David Schultz How many animal species do you think go extinct every year? Last week I conducted a highly unscientific polling of around 20 of my Facebook and Google Chat contacts, asking that same question. I’m not trying to brag, but I have some really smart friends, many of them with degrees in biology. Typical answers ranged from about 17 to a seemingly ludicrous 400. They were all wrong though—off by orders of magnitude. In July, a summary article of nearly 80 papers, published in Science, stated that, “Of a conservatively estimated 5 million to 9 million animal species on the planet, we are likely losing ~11,000 to 58,000 species annually.” READ MORE 3. To Bring Back Extinct Species, We’ll Need to Change Our Own By Brandon Keim The last passenger pigeon died just over a century ago, though they’ve lived on as symbols—of extinction’s awful finality, and also of a human carelessness so immense that it could exterminate without really trying what was the most populous bird in North America. Centennials being a form of ritual, much has been written about them recently: about flocks a mile wide turning mid-day skies black and taking days to pass, descending upon Eastern forests in a storm of life. READ MORE To really curl up with Nautilus, subscribe today and get your copy of our Winter 2015 Nautilus Quarterly. It includes new features, some of our best online content, and pages of sumptuous illustration. Join us on a journey of surprises.