A figure showing the correlation between the rate of nearby supernovae and the diversity of life on Earth. The black curve is the changing rate of supernova explosions in the vicinity of the Solar System over the past 440 million years. The blue curve is the diversity of marine invertebrate animals (number of genera) after subtracting the influence of changing sea-levels. The grey area is an estimate of errors. The scale at the top shows the geological periods (abbreviations for each period are given). Credit: H. Svensmark / DTU Space