New hypothesis for the question: Why do humans exist?

Dark matter is responsible for the existence or non-existence of anyone on this Earth.

Where do we humans come from and why do we exist? The answer to this question depends heavily on the person you ask . An astronomer will say that your body is made up of the chemical ingredients that they have been tempered from the Big Bang. For another biologist, he compares the similarities between our DNA and primates to conclude that humanity evolved from gibbons.

However, it seems that most of the answers you get will lead to another question. For example, before there were gibbons, was there anything that could determine whether we were born? Before the Earth was formed, did any of the cosmic events affect the existence or non-existence of humankind?

If you continue to ask questions before and before, Lisa Randall, a theoretical physicist from Harvard University, can give you a possible source of answers: it relates to the whole species. dinosaurs and dark matter.

Professor Lisa Randall from Harvard University.

Lisa Randall is currently a professor of particle theoretical physics and cosmology at Harvard University. She is also the author of many popular science books on The New York Time's best-selling list. In his latest book entitled "Dark matter and dinosaurs," Randall points out that the extinction of dinosaurs, an essential element for humanity, appears to be related to dark matter and things. Mysterious substances make up 85% of our universe.

An extinct species is the beginning of a new species

Current paleontologists most agree with the hypothesis of the extinction of dinosaurs related to meteorites. About 66 million years ago, a giant meteorite with a diameter of 14.4 km crashed into the Earth. It causes an effect that causes 75% of the planet's species to perish, among them most of the dinosaurs.

Among the more fortunate animals, there are some small primates. Over the course of the next 66 million years, they developed diversity, grew larger in size and learned to walk on two feet. In the end, humankind appeared in just a few million years.

Thus, the starting point we are talking about here is an asteroid collision. It is a necessary condition for dinosaurs to become extinct and open up opportunities for primates. So did we go to the point of bringing the deciding factor? Randall does not think that a small, fortuitous meteorite is responsible for human birth.

A miserable meteorite cannot be responsible for human birth.

In his book, Randall describes a dense disk of dark matter in our galaxy. It plays a role in human formation. Normally, dark matter tends to gather around the galaxy like a giant bubble. However, according to Randall, they can also look flatter and occupy a position between stars, planets or in the cloud of gas.

Dark matter has never been recorded directly. However, science today has enough evidence for its existence and the influence of gravity that dark matter creates in the universe. The vast majority of scientists agree that it is a mysterious substance that we cannot see and feel. However, they still exist there with the universe.

Disc of dark matter: danger and opportunity

Returning to Randall's hypothesis, if dark matter disks exist, they will cause a strong gravitational pull on all the surrounding objects, including our solar system.

Even so, the Solar System is not always near a plate of dark matter. That is the decisive point for Randall's theoretical model. They rotate around the center of the galaxy like the way the Earth orbits the Sun. Thereby, an oscillation up and down is created with relatively large frequency.

Below is an illustration of oscillation. The orange dot shows our Sun and the black line is the center of the dark disc.

Simulate the oscillation of the Solar System.

At the beginning of the century, a group of astronomers were able to roughly estimate the frequency of the solar system's oscillation. Accordingly, it will pass through the plane of the galaxy every 32 million years. That means that if the dark disk exists, the Solar System will also pass through it at the same frequency.

Coincidentally, the evidence of past extinctions coincides with these times. On average every 25 to 35 million years, animals living on Earth will face a difficult period.

This discovery was published by Matthew Reece, a colleague of Randall at Harvard University in last year's Physical Review Letters. Randall also analyzed it more thoroughly in her new book.

She thinks that every time she passes through the dark matter disk, its gravity will cause the neighborhood of the Solar System to be affected. They are called Oort clouds surrounding a radius of about 2 light years and filled with frozen objects at least 19km in diameter.

Correlate the distances with the Solar System.

If a body with a diameter of 19km hits the Earth, that means the end of a series of species. According to Randall, that's exactly what happened to the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.The era of primates opened by our Solar System passes through a disc of dark matter.

Prove the hypothesis

How can we prove the existence of a dark disk while we cannot observe it today? Randall tried to understand the speed and direction of the stars in our galaxy. If they move in unexplained orbits by the existence of ordinary objects, that would be attributed to dark matter.

Dark matter in this image is illustrated as intergalactic haze.

However, the actual work is not simple. Up to 100 billion stars in the Milky Way and hunting dark matter is always a difficult topic. Now scientists have more than a dozen probes on Earth and in space, they still cannot detect a direct clue of dark matter.

Thus, the proof of Randall's hypothesis must be left for the future. The ability of science today still seems to be outside the boundaries of any profound problem related to dark matter.

However, in her conclusions Randall is still optimistic about her hypothesis, she writes: "Chicxulub town, where meteorite destroying dinosaurs landing is also part of human history. If true, Dark matter is also in our history. It is responsible for the existence or non-existence of anyone on this Earth. "