Scientist Discovers Binary Star System Passed Thru Solar System Oort Cloud 70,000 Years Ago. Same Time As Humanity Experiences Population Bottleneck to Near Extinction.
34 2015-02-18 by Homer_Simpson_Doh
How Human Beings Almost Vanished From Earth In 70,000 B.C.
The Toba catastrophe theory as presented in the late 1990s to early 2000s suggested that a bottleneck of the human population occurred 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change.
Population Bottleneck at 70,000 BC
Thoughts?
24 comments
5 BingoRage 2015-02-18
Too far away to affect Earth tectonics; may have sent new comets through the inner solar system centuries or millenia later.
4 Haxford 2015-02-18
Through gravitational forces maybe, but think about the electrical implications of charged bodies moving through magnetic fields.
6 BingoRage 2015-02-18
You think that Toba erupted because of magnetic flux in the Oort Cloud?
1 Homer_Simpson_Doh 2015-02-18
I guess that if one of those stars that passed was a Magnetar/Nuetron Star then it would definitely have an effect.
1 BingoRage 2015-02-18
Yeah. A magnetar passing that close would be bad news.
0 Homer_Simpson_Doh 2015-02-18
How do we know? Having another binary star system travel near the edge our own solar system hasn't really been observed before. It just happened to coincide with Toba and "the bottleneck".
1 BingoRage 2015-02-18
Because the effects of gavity drop off with distance. The moon flexes the crust of Earth, but Jupiter doesn't.
4 Alcorr 2015-02-18
Interesting.
3 s70n3834r 2015-02-18
I wonder if that's what happened to Mars; one side of it is certainly battered all to hell.
-2 monkee67 2015-02-18
correlation is not causation
3 Ambiguously_Ironic 2015-02-18
Correlation is not necessarily causation. It pretty often is though.
1 monkee67 2015-02-18
i'll agree on the surface, this coincidence of events is a solid enough
theoryhypothesis to pursue a deeper investigation3 Ambiguously_Ironic 2015-02-18
I wasn't even necessarily talking about this post/OP, I was just responding to your specific comment and the way you worded it because I always see people writing that and it isn't accurate.
1 monkee67 2015-02-18
yes i was using a shorthanded version of the saying. and then in my mind trying to quantify "pretty often" as opposed to "often", "more often than not", and so on
0 monkee67 2015-02-18
define "pretty often"
7 Ambiguously_Ironic 2015-02-18
It's just common sense - there will necessarily be correlation in all cases where there actually is causation, excluding only the ones where the correlation isn't obvious.
-2 monkee67 2015-02-18
yes i will agree that there will be correlation where there is causation. but you haven't defined "pretty often."
2 Ambiguously_Ironic 2015-02-18
In every single case where something causes another thing, there will be a correlation between the two. Things cause other things pretty often, so correlation does pretty often point to causation. What answer are you looking for? I didn't want to get into a big debate with you, I was just pointing out that your initial comment wasn't exactly accurate.
1 monkee67 2015-02-18
i get were you're coming from and also see no reason to get into a debate on semantics, ect.
-6 solaryn 2015-02-18
Did you know that a rise in swimming pool related deaths coincides with Nicholas Cage movie premieres? Thoughts?
0 ct_warlock 2015-02-18
I think you're onto something.
-6 archonemis 2015-02-18
Shit went down in the recent past (anything less than a 100k years is recent past).
I wouldn't be surprised if a fly-by happened.
2 s70n3834r 2015-02-18
God damn it Maverick.
1 monkee67 2015-02-18
yes i was using a shorthanded version of the saying. and then in my mind trying to quantify "pretty often" as opposed to "often", "more often than not", and so on
1 BingoRage 2015-02-18
Because the effects of gavity drop off with distance. The moon flexes the crust of Earth, but Jupiter doesn't.