Earth Has a 27.5-Million-Year 'Heartbeat', But We Don't Know What Causes It - ScienceAlert

Jun 21, 2021

A new study of ancient geological events suggests that our planet has a slow, steady 'heartbeat' of geological activity every 27 million years or so.

The team conducted new analysis on the ages of 89 well-understood geological events from the past 260 million years.

Back in the 1920s and 30s, scientists of the era had suggested that the geological record had a 30-million-year cycle, while in the 1980s and 90s researchers used the best-dated geological events at the time to give them a range of the length between 'pulses' of 26.2 to 30.6 million years.

That 2018 paper, by two researchers at the University of Sydney, looked at Earth's carbon cycle and plate tectonics, and also came to the conclusion that the cycle is approximately 26 million years long. .