The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting on a new hypothesis for why the Earth has been subjected to various ice ages in its past. Theorists have proposed that when our solar system passes through a spiral arm, the cosmic rays fall to Earth and knock electrons off atoms in the atmosphere, making them electrically charged, or ionized. Since opposite electrical charges attract each other, the positively charged ionized particles attract the negatively charged portion of water vapor, thus forming large droplets in the form of low-lying clouds. In turn, the clouds cool the climate and trigger an ice age — or so theorists suggest.
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