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Are Jupiter and Venus Messing With Earth's Climate?
Are Jupiter and Venus Messing With Earth’s Climate?
George Dvorsky
Yesterday 4:25pm
Our planet is in a remarkably circular orbit around the Sun, but as new research points out, Earth’s orbit sometimes experiences a slight jolt, thanks to the combined gravitational influence of Jupiter and Venus. Incredibly, this cycle has been going on for at least 215 million years—and one scientist suggests it could possibly have influenced the trajectory of life on this planet, according to the new study published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Jupiter and Venus elongate Earth’s orbit to a tiny but measurable degree every 405,000 years, explained Dennis V. Kent, the lead author of the new study and a professor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Kent believes this highly predictable and long-running celestial pattern could be used to study geological changes on Earth and subsequent environmental and ecological shifts—and because this cycle can be traced back to the Late Triassic Era, it could even tell us something about the dinosaurs.
Scientists thought something like this was happening, but empirical evidence was lacking, and models of planetary motion only went as far back as 50 million years ago. To find traces of this hypothesized cycle on Earth, Kent’s team analyzed sediment samples taken from the Chinle Formation in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park and the Newark basin, the site of a prehistoric lake. Core samples taken from these sites measured 2.5 inches in diameter and about 1,700 feet long. With each passing foot of depth, the researchers traveled back further and further into time, finally entering into the Triassic Period, the first of three geological epochs in which the dinosaurs lived.
Looking at the samples, the team chronicled the long-term record of reversals in the Earth’s magnetic poles. These periodic (but irregular) flips can be seen in sediments containing zircon—minerals with uranium that can be used for radiocarbon dating, allowing the sample to serve as a kind of clock. Climate shifts were seen in the sediment in the form of alternating wet and dry periods. As noted in the study, the samples correlated with a remarkably continuous cycle, which Kent dubbed the astrochronostratigraphic polarity timescale (APTS), going all the way back some 215 million years to the Triassic Period.
George Dvorsky
Yesterday 4:25pm
Our planet is in a remarkably circular orbit around the Sun, but as new research points out, Earth’s orbit sometimes experiences a slight jolt, thanks to the combined gravitational influence of Jupiter and Venus. Incredibly, this cycle has been going on for at least 215 million years—and one scientist suggests it could possibly have influenced the trajectory of life on this planet, according to the new study published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Jupiter and Venus elongate Earth’s orbit to a tiny but measurable degree every 405,000 years, explained Dennis V. Kent, the lead author of the new study and a professor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Kent believes this highly predictable and long-running celestial pattern could be used to study geological changes on Earth and subsequent environmental and ecological shifts—and because this cycle can be traced back to the Late Triassic Era, it could even tell us something about the dinosaurs.
Scientists thought something like this was happening, but empirical evidence was lacking, and models of planetary motion only went as far back as 50 million years ago. To find traces of this hypothesized cycle on Earth, Kent’s team analyzed sediment samples taken from the Chinle Formation in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park and the Newark basin, the site of a prehistoric lake. Core samples taken from these sites measured 2.5 inches in diameter and about 1,700 feet long. With each passing foot of depth, the researchers traveled back further and further into time, finally entering into the Triassic Period, the first of three geological epochs in which the dinosaurs lived.
Looking at the samples, the team chronicled the long-term record of reversals in the Earth’s magnetic poles. These periodic (but irregular) flips can be seen in sediments containing zircon—minerals with uranium that can be used for radiocarbon dating, allowing the sample to serve as a kind of clock. Climate shifts were seen in the sediment in the form of alternating wet and dry periods. As noted in the study, the samples correlated with a remarkably continuous cycle, which Kent dubbed the astrochronostratigraphic polarity timescale (APTS), going all the way back some 215 million years to the Triassic Period.
