In the 1980s scientists believed that Earth’s regular extinctions could be the result of a distant dark twin of the Sun, called Nemesis.
The theory was that Nemesis crashed through the Oort cloud every 27 million years and sent a shower of comets in our direction.
The Oort cloud is a vast belt of dust and ice that is believed to lie around one light year from the Sun and is the origin of many of the comets that pass through our solar system.
But now scientists claim that the regularity of the mass extinctions actually disproves the Nemesis theory because its orbit would have changed over time as it interacted with other stars.
‘Fossil data, which motivated the idea of Nemesis, now militate against it,’ say the researchers.’
The last extinction event, 11 million years ago, saw 10 per cent of the Earth’s inhabitants wiped out.
This means there is around 16million years until the next event takes place, although the graph shows that it occasionally the event takes place up to 10 million years early.
Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1294372/Life-Earth-wiped-27-million-years.htmlLooks like we got at least 6 million more years, score.