Related papers: End-cretaceous cooling and mass extinction driven …
The origin of the Chicxulub impactor, which is attributed as the cause of the K/T mass extinction event, is an unsolved puzzle. The background impact rates of main-belt asteroids and long-period comets have been previously dismissed as…
In 1980, Alvarez and colleagues proposed that, in the transition from the Cretaceous to Paleogene, a large impactor collided with Earth being the cause of the mass extinction occurred at the limit K / Pg. In 1980 there was no known impact…
A dynamical model for large near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is developed here to understand the occurrence rate and nature of Cretaceous-Paleogene (K/Pg) scale impacts on the Earth. We find that 16--32 (2--4) impacts of diameter $D>5$ km…
We interpret the interstellar extinction observed towards the Galactic Center (GC) in the wavelength range $\lambda = 1 - 20\,\mkm$. Its main feature is the flat extinction at $3 - 8\,\mkm$ whose explanation is still a problem for the…
A recent paper by Siraj & Loeb (2021) entitled "Breakup of a long-period comet as the origin of the dinosaur extinction" attempts to revive the perennial debate about what type of body hit the Earth 66 million years ago, triggering the…
Interstellar dust is a major foreground contaminant for many observations and a key component in the chemistry of the interstellar medium, yet its properties remain highly uncertain. Using low-resolution spectra, we accurately measure the…
A comparison of northern and southern hemispheric paleotemperature profiles suggests that the Bolling-Allerod Interstadial, Younger Dryas stadial, and subsequent Preboreal warming which occurred at the end of the last ice age were…
We reply to criticisms by Desch et al. (2021) regarding our Scientific Reports paper, "Breakup of a long-period comet as the origin of the dinosaur extinction." The background impact rates of main-belt asteroids and long-period comets have…
Observations of interstellar extinction and polarization indicate that the interstellar medium consists of aligned non-spherical dust grains which show variation in the interstellar extinction curve for wavelengths ranging from NIR to UV.…
Hammer et al. [1997] report the presence of regularly spaced acidity peaks (H+, F-, Cl-) in the Byrd Station, Antarctica ice core. The event has a duration of about one century and falls at the beginning of the deglacial warming. Volcanism…
We consider the Herschel-Planck infrared observations of presumed condensations of interstellar material at a measured temperature of approximately 14 K (Juvela et al., 2012), the triple point temperature of hydrogen. The standard picture…
Certain dust particles in space are expected to appear as clusters of individual grains. The morphology of these clusters could be fractal or compact. To determine how these structural features would affect the interpretation of the…
While it is well recognized that both the Galactic interstellar extinction curves and the gas-phase abundances of dust-forming elements exhibit considerable variations from one sight line to another, as yet most of the dust extinction…
We calculate the expected flux profile of comets into the planetary system from the Oort cloud arising from Galactic tides and encounters with molecular clouds. We find that both periodic and sporadic bombardment episodes, with amplitudes…
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…
A composite dust grain model which simultaneously explains the observed interstellar extinction, polarization, IR emission and the abundance constraints, is required. We present a composite grain model, which is made up of a host silicate…
The presence of metals in hot cluster gas and in Ly-alpha absorbers, as well as the mass-metallicity relation of observed galaxies, suggest that galaxies lose a significant fraction of their metals to the intergalactic medium (IGM).…
We use deep $8\:\mu m$ Spitzer-IRAC imaging of a massive Infrared Dark Cloud (IRDC) G028.37+00.07 to construct a Mid-Infrared (MIR) extinction map that probes mass surface densities up to $\Sigma\:\sim 1\:\rm{g~cm^{-2}}$…
We have studied the interstellar extinction in a field of ~3' x 3' at the core of the 30 Doradus nebula, including the central R136 cluster, in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Observations at optical and near-infrared wavelengths, obtained with…
A few of the major mass extinctions of paleontology have recently been found to consist of two distinct extinction peaks at higher resolution. A viable explanation for this remains elusive. In this paper it is shown that the recently…