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Despite tremendous interest in the topic and decades of research, the origins of the major losses of biodiversity in the history of life on Earth remain elusive. A variety of possible causes for these mass-extinction events have been…
The timeline of the Earth's history reveals quasi-periodicity of the geological record over the last 542 Myr, on timescales close, in the order of magnitude, to 1 Myr. What is the origin of this quasi-periodicity? What is the nature of the…
Mass extinction is a phenomenon in the history of life on Earth when a considerable number of species go extinct over a relatively short period of time. The magnitude of extinction varies between the events, the most well known are the…
This thesis assesses the influence of astronomical phenomena on the Earth's biosphere and climate. I examine in particular the relevance of both the path of the Sun through the Galaxy and the evolution of the Earth's orbital parameters in…
Numerous studies over the past 30 years have suggested there is a causal connection between the motion of the Sun through the Galaxy and terrestrial mass extinctions or climate change. Proposed mechanisms include comet impacts (via…
The causes of major and rapid transitions observed in biological macroevolution as well as in the evolution of social systems are a subject of much debate. Here we identify the proximate causes of crashes and recoveries that arise…
I find evidence for clustering in age of well-dated impact craters over the last 500 Myr. At least nine impact episodes are identified, with durations whose upper limits are set by the dating accuracy of the craters. Their amplitudes and…
Recent observations suggest that many planetary-mass objects may be present in the outer solar system between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. Gravitational perturbations may occasionally bring them into the inner solar system. Their…
The apparantly irregular (unpredictable) space-time fluctuations in atmospheric flows ranging from climate (thousands of kilometers - years) to turbulence (millimeters - seconds) exhibit the universal symmetry of self-similarity.…
We propose that catastrophic events are "outliers" with statistically different properties than the rest of the population and result from mechanisms involving amplifying critical cascades. Applications and the potential for prediction are…
Despite major advances in climate science over the last 30 years, persistent uncertainties in projections of future climate change remain. Climate projections are produced with increasingly complex models which attempt to represent key…
The terrestrial fossil record shows a significant variation in the extinction and origination rates of species during the past half billion years. Numerous studies have claimed an association between this variation and the motion of the Sun…
We propose a framework for studying predictability of extreme events in complex systems. Major conceptual elements -- hierarchical structure, spatial dynamics, and external driving -- are combined in a classical branching diffusion with…
Twenty years ago, after analysing palaeontological data, Raup and Sepkoski suggested that mass extinctions on Earth appear cyclically in time with a period of approximately 26 million years (My). To explain the 26My period, a number of…
We review recent work aimed at modeling species extinction over geological time. We discuss a number of models which, rather than dealing with the direct causes of particular extinction events, attempt to predict overall statistical trends,…
The frequency and magnitude of weather extreme events have increased significantly during the past few years in response to anthropogenic climate change. However, global statistical characteristics and underlying physical mechanisms are…
Giant impacts by comets and asteroids have probably had an important influence on terrestrial biological evolution. We know of around 180 high velocity impact craters on the Earth with ages up to 2400Myr and diameters up to 300km. Some…
The hypothesis of a companion object (Nemesis) orbiting the Sun was motivated by the claim of a terrestrial extinction periodicity, thought to be mediated by comet showers. The orbit of a distant companion to the Sun is expected to be…
In a recent article by Scafetta, 2010, the author investigates whether or not the decadal and multi-decadal climate oscillations have an astronomical origin. In particular, the author note that several global surface temperature records,…
Understanding and predicting uncertain things are the central themes of scientific evolution. Human beings revolve around these fears of uncertainties concerning various aspects like a global pandemic, health, finances, to name but a few.…