The Nebula Winter; The United view of the snowball Earth, mass extinctions, and explosive evolution in the late Neoproterozoic and Cambrian periods

Kataoka, Ryuho*; Ebisuzaki, Toshikazu*; Miyahara, Hiroko*; Nimura, Tokuhiro*; Tomida, Takayuki*; Sato, Tatsuhiko   ; Maruyama, Shigenori*

We propose the Nebula Winter model to explain catastrophic events of the earth, such as mass extinctions and snowball earth events. Encounters with nebulae, such as supernova remnants and dark clouds in the galaxy, can lead to a catastrophic environmental change on the Earth through the destruction of the ozone layer and climate forcing by enhanced fluxes of cosmic rays and cosmic dust particles.