Science
advances by paradigm shifts. My one-time co-researcher, Nobel Prize
winning economist Herb Simon, once explained it to me. The new paradigm
begins with a new overall curve. Further research builds upon that curve
by mapping the phenomena responsible for fluctuations from the curve.
That's the normal scientific process. But establishing a new big curve
requires a paradigm shift.
Such a paradigm shift started a decade ago, when Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv and Canadian geologist Jan Veizer published the ground-breaking study that laid out the chief long-term cause of climate change -- cosmic rays. The graph below shows the curve that they discovered. The original is found and explained on Nir Shaviv's blog at http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages:
Shaviv had mapped the travels of the solar system through the spiral arms of our galaxy (shown in the top half of the above graph). Veizer had mapped the ice ages of the last 500 billion years (shown, along with the fit to the cosmic ray inflow, in the temperature record in the bottom half of the above graph). What they found is that ice ages occurred when the Earth traveled through the spiral arms of our galaxy, periods when the Earth must have been experiencing high levels of cosmic ray inflow.
Such a paradigm shift started a decade ago, when Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv and Canadian geologist Jan Veizer published the ground-breaking study that laid out the chief long-term cause of climate change -- cosmic rays. The graph below shows the curve that they discovered. The original is found and explained on Nir Shaviv's blog at http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages:
Shaviv had mapped the travels of the solar system through the spiral arms of our galaxy (shown in the top half of the above graph). Veizer had mapped the ice ages of the last 500 billion years (shown, along with the fit to the cosmic ray inflow, in the temperature record in the bottom half of the above graph). What they found is that ice ages occurred when the Earth traveled through the spiral arms of our galaxy, periods when the Earth must have been experiencing high levels of cosmic ray inflow.
No comments:
Post a Comment