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Updated: Aug 3, 2026

Laboratory Drop Towers for the Experimental Simulation of Dust-aggregate Collisions in the Early Solar System
Published on: June 5, 2014
Mass extinctions and supernova explosions
1Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany.
Abstract:
In a recent contribution to this journal Ellis and Schramm [Ellis, J. & Schramm, D. N. (1995) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 92, 235-238] claim that supernova explosions can cause massive biological extinctions as a result of strongly enhanced stratospheric NOx (NO + NO2) production by accompanying galactic cosmic rays. They suggested that these NOx productions which would last over several centuries and occur once every few hundred million years would result in ozone depletions of about 95%, leading to vastly increased levels of biologically damaging solar ultraviolet radiation. Our detailed model calculations show, however, substantially smaller ozone depletions ranging from at most 60% at high latitudes to below 20% at the equator.
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