Earth has a 'heartbeat' and nobody knows what causes it

Humans have been on Earth for just a fraction of its existence. The planet has a life, mind and nature or its own, so to speak. A lot keeps on happening without human even being aware of it, let alone having power to control it.

Now scientists have found that Earth has a 'heartbeat' and a even a 'pulse' of 27.5 million years. And we don't know what causes it. Michael Rampino, a Geologist of New York University led the team that carried out the study.

The 'heartbeat' is of clustered geological events. Scientists have found that major events such mass extinction, where major chunk of life on Earth died out, happened at the time of this 'pulse'. It is not the only catastrophic event that occurred around the pulse but others such as volcanic eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, intraplate magmatism, changes in seafloor and others.

The scientists found that most of these calamitous incidents happened over geologically small period of time every 27.5 million years. However, there is no firm reason for existence of this cycle.

So does this mean that we are doomed? End of humanity is just around the corner?

Well we can take heart in knowing that scientists who did this study predict that the next such pulse is 20 million years away.

The study has been published in the scientific journal Geoscience Frontiers.