Investigations into the impact of astronomical phenomena on the terrestrial biosphere and climate

Since Nobel laureate Alvarez and his colleagues' revolutionary research on associating the K/T extinction event with an asteroid impact (Alvarez et al. 1980), numerous astronomical hypotheses of mass extinction events have been proposed. These studies of mass extinction on the Earth have not reached a consensus on a common causes of these extinction events. One of the problems is the use of overly simple and even inappropriate model inference methods (e.g. Bailer-Jones 2009). Fabo Feng's PhD project addressed this issue by building astronomical models to predict geological time series (e.g. impact cratering, species extinction rates) and applying Bayesian methods to compare these astronomically motivated models with other models. This work has led to a number of interesting and exciting conclusions:

The PhD thesis is available from arXiv.

Back to the astroimpacts home page.