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If something 12 miles wide hit Earth today, it would mean the end of life as we know it. And Randall thinks that's exactly what happened to the dinosaurs 66 million years ago that opened the door for widespread primate evolution.
Prove it(NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center)
Dark matter is illustrated here as the fog between galaxies.
While it's impossible to wind back the clock, proving the existence of the dark disc would greatly advance Randall's theory.
She's tried to do so by looking at the speed and direction of stars in our galaxy. If stars moved in ways that couldn't be explained by the amount of ordinary, visible matter around them, then it could suggest the presence of the dark disc.
But that's a very tall order. There are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, and hunting dark matter is notoriously tricky.
We have a dozen or so functioning detectors underground, on Earth's surface, and in space — and none of them has yet managed to sniff out a dark-matter particle. If they do, it would be a significant step toward supporting Randall's hypothesis.
In her concluding remarks, Randall writes:
"In some global sense, we are all descendants of Chicxulub [the town where the dinosaur-killing meteor impacted]. It's a part of our history that we should want to understand. If true, the additional wrinkle presented in this book would mean that not only was dark matter responsible for irrevocably changing our world, but also that some of it played a crucial role in allowing our existence."
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