Cosmic flux in gravity ‘may have helped mass-murdering asteroid kill dinosaurs’

GRAVITY may be as responsible for killing the dinosaurs as the giant asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago.

A new study suggests a universe-wide change in gravity could have yanked the space rock from the outer solar system and flung it at Earth.

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This is a new theory from Leandros Perivolaropoulos, a physicist at the University of Ioannina in Greece.

He has published a paper about the theory which states that a suspected gravity change “may also be connected with the Chicxulub impactor event that produced the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction of 75% of life on Earth (including dinosaurs)”.

Some experts think an increase in the baseline of gravitational force may have occurred 150 million years ago.

This theory has been around for a while and is often debated by the astronomical community.

There’s no solid evidence this happened but, if it did, every object in the universe would be affected.

The baseline force of gravity is known as Newton’s constant and there are lots of scientists who think it can change.

Perivolaropoulos is making the connection between this and the dinosaur-killing asteroid because that particular space event changed the world as we know it.

The physicist wants to explain why it happened and thinks a potential 10% increase in the gravitational constant over 100 million years would have been enough to bring the deadly asteroid our way.

He thinks the gravity changes could have ended 50 million years ago.

When the baseline of gravity’s force goes up, space objects are pulled together with much more force.

This could lead to erratic behavior from asteroids and other space debris.

Perivolaropoulos’s computer simulations suggested that a 10% boost to gravity could drag lots more comets and asteroids towards Earth and the Sun.

The physicist thinks that a change to gravity could have disrupted the Oort Cloud.

That’s a region beyond Neptune that’s said to have plenty of comets and asteroids.

The rare giant asteroid that killed the dinosaurs may have been plucked from here due to gravitational changes and put on a collision course with Earth.

Perivolaropoulos suggests an increase in asteroid impacts could be found in the geological record of Earth and on the Moon and connected to a time of increased gravitational force.

He wrote: “The impact flux of kilometer-sized objects increased by at least a factor of two over that last 100 million years compared to the long-term average.”

However, others aren’t so keen on the theory.

Astronomer Ben Montet told The Daily Beast: “There is no geological evidence to believe this is the case.”

Perivolaropoulos plans to conduct more research in the area.

In other news, amateur rocket builders are planning to take on the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos by launching a man to space.

This week marks the anniversary of the first chimpanzee in space.

And, the US space agency is planning for a ‘golden asteroid’ probing mission to launch this summer.