An influential and leading physicist at Harvard University proposed a new theory as to why humans exist and where we all came from.
Professor Lisa Randall, who is widely known for her work on cosmology and theoretical particle physics, said that the extinction of dinosaurs, which paved the way for our species' emergence, is associated with dark matter.
In the book "Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe," Randall describes a hypothetical dark disk of closely-packed dark matter within the galaxy that may have been the reason why humans had emerged.
Randall explained that dark matter was responsible for the universe's structure as well as the formation of galaxies. Dark matter is the invisible material that scientists say comprise 85% of all matter in the universe.
"It's pretty important and it has an important role today in that it's kind of holding everything together," said Randall.
Paleontologists agree that a celestial body nine miles long struck the Earth more than 66 million years ago. The impact of the celestial body wiped out approximately 75 percent of the species living throughout Earth, including dinosaurs. Small primates were among the survivors, they said. These primates grew larger, diversified, developed larger brains and started to walk on two legs.
Randall said that the event that killed the dinosaurs and led to the emergence of humans was not entirely based on luck or chance.
The professor speculates that a small portion of dark matter interacts with the matter around it in different ways, aside from exerting a gravitational-like pull. This hypothetical dark disk sits inside the mid-plane of the Milky Way galaxy, and its gravitational force affects the motion of the stars. It can also dislodge comets from the Oort cloud, she said.
Randall illustrated her theory this way: there is a big plane and something is circling around it, above it and sometimes below it. For a material that has been going around the big plane to get from the top to the bottom, it has to go through the big plane. Every time it passes through the big plane, which she says possibly happens about every 30 to 35 million years, the material hits the disk of dark matter. Because of that, the gravitational force will be enhanced, she said.
This enhanced gravitational force could be what caused asteroids from interstellar space to come crashing to Earth. Randall said fossil and geologic records of the Earth support her theory.
"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," Randall concluded.
