The Astrophysical Journal Letters

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

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The Astrophysical Journal Letters Volume 705 Number 2 Create an alert RSS this journal

Andrew C. Overholt et al 2009 ApJ 705 L101 doi:10.1088/0004-637X/705/2/L101

TESTING THE LINK BETWEEN TERRESTRIAL CLIMATE CHANGE AND GALACTIC SPIRAL ARM TRANSIT

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Andrew C. Overholt1, Adrian L. Melott1 and Martin Pohl2

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Abstract References Cited By

We re-examine past suggestions of a close link between terrestrial climate change and the Sun's transit of spiral arms in its path through the Milky Way galaxy. These links produced concrete fits, deriving the unknown spiral pattern speed from terrestrial climate correlations. We test these fits against new data on spiral structure based on CO data that do not make simplifying assumptions about symmetry and circular rotation. If we compare the times of these transits with changes in the climate of Earth, the claimed correlations not only disappear, but we also find that they cannot be resurrected for any reasonable pattern speed.


Keywords

Earth; Galaxy: structure; solar neighborhood; solar system: general


PACS

98.35.Hj Spiral arms and galactic disk

98.35.Pr Solar neighborhood

98.35.Df Kinematics, dynamics, and rotation

Subjects

Astrophysics and astroparticles

Dates

Issue 2 (2009 November 10)

Received 2009 June 16, accepted for publication 2009 September 16

Published 2009 October 20



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