We tend to think of the Sun as the stationary heart of our Solar System, with the planets orbiting serenely around it. In reality, the Sun is dragging us around the galaxy at around 800,000 km/h, taking around 250 million years to complete a single orbit. That means our solar system has made around 18 complete circuits since it was formed around 4.5 billion years ago. The earth experienced its biggest mass extinction about 250 million years ago, an event that wiped out an estimated 95% of marine species and 70% of land species. New research shows that this mass extinction did more than eliminate species, it fundamentally changed the basic ecology of the oceans. 250,000,000 years ago our solar system was at this same point in our orbit around our galaxy what could indicate that the our solar system is approaching the mass extinction zone in its orbit again. We are now about 27,000 lightyears away from the galactic center, close to the perigalacticon. The difference between ap...