Earth has ‘heartbeat’ that causes ‘catastrophe’ of floods, eruptions and extinctions every 27.5million years, says study

EARTH has a destructive ‘heartbeat’ of geological activity that ‘beats’ every 27.5million years, according to a new study.

Researchers think they’ve spotted a pattern in major geological events that have happened over the vast history of the Earth, including extinctions, eruptions and floods.

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Luckily, the scientists think we have another 20million years to go before the next geological ‘heartbeat’.

Michael Rampino, a New York University geologist, is the study’s lead author.

He said: “Many geologists believe that geological events are random over time.

“But our study provides statistical evidence for a common cycle, suggesting that these geologic events are correlated and not random.”

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The team analysed 89 major geological events that have happened over the past 260 million years.

They made graphs to show peaks in geological activity and how they seem to cluster together.

The graphs show how world changing events have often happened close together in catastrophic ‘pulses’ of activity.

The team explain: “These events include times of marine and non-marine extinctions, major ocean-anoxic events, continental flood-basalt eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, global pulses of intraplate magmatism, and times of changes in seafloor-spreading rates and plate reorganizations.

“Our results suggest that global geologic events are generally correlated, and seem to come in pulses with an underlying ~27.5-million-year cycle.”

This isn’t the first time that geologists have tried to work out a pattern for geological events.

In the 1980s and 90s a theory arose that the world changing events happened around every 26.2 to 30.6million years.

The new study puts a more precise timeline in place.

The researchers explain in their paper: “These cyclic pulses of tectonics and climate change may be the result of geophysical processes related to the dynamics of plate tectonics and mantle plumes, or might alternatively be paced by astronomical cycles associated with the Earth’s motions in the Solar System and the Galaxy.”

This full study has been published in journal Geoscience Frontiers.

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