00:00Did you know that the Earth has a pulse? A geological pulse, that is.
00:05Most major geological events in Earth's recent history have clustered and
00:1027.5 million year intervals, a pattern that scientists are now calling
00:15the pulse of the Earth. Over the past 260 million years
00:20dozens of major geological events, from sea level changes to volcanic eruptions.
00:25Seem to follow this rhythmic pattern. The authors say that...
00:30Geologists have wondered for a really long time whether there's a certain cycle of around 30 million years...
00:35in the geological record. But until recently, poor dating of such events made the phenomena...
00:40really difficult to study quantitatively.
00:44In a new...
00:45study, the researchers conducted a quantitative analysis to see if these events were random...
00:50or if there was an underlying pattern to them.
00:54To do this, they...
00:55They first searched the literature and found 89 major geological events that occurred in the past two...
01:00160 million years. These included extinctions...
01:05ocean anoxic events, or times when the oceans were toxic due to oxygen depletion...
01:10sea level fluctuations...
01:13major volcanic activity...
01:15flood basalt eruptions...
01:17and changes in the organization of Earth's ticketing...
01:20oceanic plates.
01:21Then, the researchers put the events in chronological order...
01:25and used a mathematical tool known as Fourier analysis...
01:28to pick up spikes in the...
01:30frequency of events.
01:31They discovered that most of these events clustered into tens...
01:35separate times that were, on average, 27.5 million years apart.
01:40Though that number may not be exact, it's probably a pretty...
01:45good estimate, the researchers say.
01:47However, they only looked at the past...
01:50260 million years when the dating of such events is most accurate.
01:55Still, they think the results likely extend further back in our planet's history.
02:00It's not clear what's causing such a pulse in geological activity, but the research...
02:05have several hypotheses.
02:06It could be internally driven by plate tectonics...
02:10and movement inside the mantle.
02:12Or, it could have something to do with the movement of Earth...
02:15and the solar system in the galaxy.
02:18The researchers hope to get...
02:20even better data on the dating of certain geological events...
02:23and plan to analyze a longer time period...
02:25to see if the pulse extends further back in time.
02:29They also...
02:30hope that if one day...
02:31they can get better numbers on the astronomical movements of Earth through the solar system...
02:35and the Milky Way...
02:36they can see if there's any correlation in the astronomical and geological...
02:40cycles.
02:41In any case, if such a pattern exists...
02:45the last cluster was about 7 million to 10 million years ago...
02:49so the next...
02:50one would likely come in 10 million to 15 million years.
02:55the current operation of Earth...
02:57tamam!!!
03:00You
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