Abstract
Catastrophes in our solar system have played a big role especially during its early evolution, e.g., the formation of the Earth’s moon or the slow retrograde rotation of our sister planet Venus can be explained by catastrophic collisions of the early planets with other planet-sized objects. Catastrophes may have happened also on later stages during the Earth’s evolution. We give a review about the possible catastrophe scenarios and address to the question whether they caused the known mass extinctions during the last 500 million years on Earth. Could cosmic catastrophes be a thread to the existence of life in the solar system. With the discovery of many extrasolar planetary systems, the study can be extended to these systems.
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Hanslmeier, A. (2012). Habitability and Cosmic Catastrophes. In: Hanslmeier, A., Kempe, S., Seckbach, J. (eds) Life on Earth and other Planetary Bodies. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4966-5_10
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