The Solar Storm Theory and the Impact Theory May Both Be Right

The question of what caused the Younger Dryas - the catastrophic cooling event that struck Earth roughly 12,800 years ago - has produced competing theories, and Randall argues the emerging evidence may be reconciling them rather than forcing a choice between them. The leading explanation he favors is a multi-impact event, triggered by Earth passing through a cluster of cometary debris from a recently fragmented comet. However, Robert Schoch's solar storm hypothesis isn't simply an alternative - it may be part of the same sequence.

The mechanism Randall points to is specific. NASA has captured video footage of comets plunging into the sun, followed immediately by gigantic coronal mass ejections. That observation matters because it suggests the two theories are not mutually exclusive - a cometary bombardment could have destabilized the sun's chromosphere and triggered the solar activity that compounded the destruction on Earth. British astronomers have begun referring to this kind of event as a bombardment epoch, and Randall argues that framing is the one that best accounts for the full scale of what the geological and archaeological record shows happened at the Younger Dryas boundary.