Time for another round of space cloud doom!

[link to www.udel.edu]

Ongoing studies of Earth's "cocoon" might someday reveal whether close encounters with cosmic clouds cause periodic extinctions, according to Zank, who earned a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1993 and a Zeldovich Medal in 1996.

"We're surrounded by hot gas," Zank says. "As our sun moves through extremely 'empty' or low-density interstellar space, the solar wind produces a protective bubble-the heliosphere around our solar system, which allows life to flourish on Earth. Unfortunately, we could bump into a small cloud at any time, and we probably won't see it coming. Without the heliosphere, neutral hydrogen would interact with our atmosphere, possibly producing catastrophic climate changes, while our exposure to deadly cosmic radiation in the form of very high-energy cosmic rays would increase."

Let's see.. Space cloud can cause climate change on all the solar system's planets, disrupt the Sun, knock Oort objects off orbit causing comets, and rain space radiation down on us..

Let's tick off the list.. Check.. Check.. Check.. Check..